Latest performance of ‘Position, influence’ by Mellissa Hughes:

Attention: Do NOT listen through computer speakers. Only good headphones or speakers with good enough Bass.
Brief Description:
- A position of influence, giving a speech
- An absence of message yet a desire to persuade
- Electronic toys: a laryngophone and metal transducers
- Text from Charles De Gaulle (speech from his response to May ’68 movement in Paris), followed with additional statements of growing desperation and changed tactics in this ill-fated attempt to win over an audience.

Why do we create art and what do we expect it to do? This is the question posed in ’68′. In the beginning we witness the creative act: a poet, writing and speaking out the earliest fragments of his poems; discovering through experiment his voice, both physically and figuratively. It alludes to Isidore Isou, a romanian-born poet who, in 1942, at the age of 17, moved to Paris and wrote a manifesto on ‘lettrisme’, sparking a movement. With each creative moment, our poet’s own energy and imagination are embodied in the actions of the percussion, violoncelle, and the mise-en-scene.

But what of society? What of government? Our poet realizes that his artistic actions have no way of changing society unless he confronts social and economic issues, at the expense of artistic vision. Our poet decides that his art must not simply discover and create and describe, it must enact.
Guy Debord’s Societe du Spectacle, a work whose message is as relevant today as it was leading up to Mai 68, is central to this decision. Our poet accosts us, the audience, urging us to see the spectacle for what it is, and how it is not real society.
Throughout the piece we see the works of Jacques Villegle, constantly putting the mirror to the moment- and in so doing, they make us aware of our present moment.

For three racks of resonating metal sheets. (Listen only with Good speakers)

position, influence (first performance, IRCAM, 2007, Donatienne Michel-Dansac, sop)

artaud- last days, 2006:  here


1 Response to “watch”


  1. December 10, 2008 at 10:54 am

    Pinche David, I’ll never be bored earing your position, influence… pinche gringo!


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