This Thursday, I had the privilege of being able to attend an online lecture, hosted by composer, and artist Jessica Ekomane.
Jessica, born in France, is a Berlin-based technical, electronic and performative sound artist. Jessica’s craft centres around live, and interactive performances as well as installations. Often, Jessica moulds situations where the sound created, is posed as a metamorphic facet for the space, and the audience. Using Quadraphonic performances, she is able to provoke a cathartic reaction, due to frequently experimenting with psychoacoustics, the perception of rhythmic shape and the contrast between sound and melody. Jessica’s versatile and sonic terrains explore questions regarding the relationship between unique, individual perception and grouped kinetics. In 2019, Jessica released her first LP through Important Records, and in May 2020, she also released an EP entitled ‘Multivocal’.
Jessica opened with a short exploration of her inspirations and aspirations for her work, talking about the ritualistic nature of music itself, and when it is performed live. The art of performing one’s live work, whether that be to 1,000 people or 100 people, is critical to Jessica’s ethos. She aims to create the most interactive environment possible for her live performances, often playing with the capacity of one’s body and striving to achieve this ritualistic atmosphere surrounding her concerts, an atmosphere Jessica deems extremely important, when it comes to performance of Sound Art. Jessica went on to explain how working with rhythm so early on in her career, helped her to lay out the foundations of what she creates now. “Everyone can understand rhythm” Jessica states, an idea which helped to shape much of her recent work. Although Jessica’s work is largely abstract and experimental, she encourages audience members to dance, or simply engage with her work through their body’s in one way or another, explaining to us, her want for bodily interaction. This bodily interaction, dancing to abstract sound work, often provokes a cathartic reaction from her spectators, something Jessica cherishes greatly.
Jessica cites ‘Poeme symphonique’ as one of her many inspirations, fascinated by the idea of simultaneous, unique rhythms and the moving composition, as well as the long duration and ever-changing rhythms, an idea which seeps heavily into her own work, especially ‘Solid of Revolution’.
Jessica played us a live version of her piece ‘Solid of Revolution’ which is intended for Quadraphonic listening (4 avenues of sound), a technique she uses at all of her live shows. The piece contains an ever-changing rhythm, as if the music itself has a subconscious reflex, never letting one rhythm play out more than once, changing it ever so slightly. One the piece has finished, Jessica explains her interest in playing with the audience’s impulses when perceiving sound, as it is one’s bodily reflex to tune into one of the four avenues of sound, unable to evenly listen to all 4 at once. Toying with the relationship between the body and the mind, which one is thinking and which one is feeling, Jessica openly tests her audience, intrigued by how they will perceive, and what they will perceive.
Following on from ‘Solid of Revolution’, Jessica then played us ‘Club Music- comedown’ (2020, Studio Berlin). The piece uses formatted elements of EDM but with a signature twist. The piece builds several times, stops and breaks off, then restarts a disjointed build up using a different sound. The drastic contrasts between sounds used, as well as a lack of climax within the piece is what strays from your typical EDM piece, although the song does play with elements of club, house and techno music. Jessica expressed the importance of visual imagery for this particular work, inviting listeners to paint a picture in their mind, and let it change with each sound. Jessica also drew a likeness to her piece, and the breaking down of a system, whether that be political or societal, and how the piece embodies that breakage, ever stopping/starting, and never reaching it’s climax/end. She then posed the question: ‘Does having rules help with creativity”, drawing on her own experience of setting herself rules when making her work, and the benefits it can have.
Jessica then went on to talk about ‘Tribute to Whistle- German Pavilion at Venice Biennale (2019). This installation uses 6 musical pieces, each with a distinct subjectivity, to share a space and perpetually form a sociality, as they overlap, intersect and merge with one another. Using 48 speakers, 6 amplifiers, 6 audio players, different coloured speaker cables, scaffolding and lights, the installation is a tribute to the whistles used for communication between civilians. Whilst under siege from police, civilians would whistle the abbreviation of the popular phrase ‘All Cops Are Bastards’: ACAB, to warn others of police presence. As well as a scathing reminder of the Police whistles, which would have been ringing out with some velocity, at the time of the attack. The piece plays on the ‘Boatswain’s call’, a type of whistling communication used at sea by sailor’s.
Jessica concluded with a short rundown of her newest project: ‘Cashmere Radio’, an experimental, non-profit radio show, run by a community of volunteers in Berlin. The show is a creation stemming from contemporary music, and invites guests which have some influence/traction within their local scene. Jessica explains that the show is also an offered space for other voices in scenes that don’t have as much traction, and described the guests and people involved as an exciting generation of artists.