almost void

For the multimedia work whenever on on on nohow on, Peter Welz asked William Forsythe to inscribe a quote from Beckett’s Worstward Ho, “whenever on on on nohow on”, through physical movement. The inscription and the dance that evolves from it were filmed from different angles (thus the cameras attached to Forsythe’s hands) and then projected onto several screens.

What we see in almost void is only one of these angles, i.e. Forsythe viewed from the front, and at half speed. The music written for this is a series of waves that breaks down into fragments divided by repose or silence, thereby leaving Forsythe’s movements unaccompanied. The disconnection between the visual and the aural is intended as a reference to the antilanguage in Beckett’s late work. Yet there is irony at play here, for while Beckett sought to use words abstractly to escape their meanings, and though music is by its very nature abstract, some level of semantic content is always present. Regardless of whether Forsythe’s movements are slow and the music fast or vice versa, a dialogue is established between the two art forms. Even the silences are never completely empty; they are marked by the memory of what preceded them, the curious effect of Forsythe dancing to no sound, and the anticipation of what comes next. Thus, even fleeting moments of pure abstraction are impossible. At best, one may only achieve, to borrow again from Becket, an “almost void.”

Another reference to Samuel Beckett can be found in the harmonic and gestural material: the repeated A-flats in the first two and a half minutes and the music that appears suddenly in mm. 79, or roughly half way through, is an allusion to the beginning of Morton Feldman’s For Samuel Beckett.

almost void – whenever on on on nohow on was written for Céline Papion and Junko Yamamoto, who premiered the work on February 21st, 2013 at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth.