The creation of jazz/improvised music and art is similar. Both start with blank canvases , one aural and the other visual. Which they start to populate with sounds or images. So the performances developed by Aurelie Freoua at the Vortex have became a major means whereby these creative strands are developed together but in parallel.
The performances of Resonances at the Vortex invite an audience to join the journey and participate. This is now extended to verbal (with poets) and dancer. So primarily an extension of the palette to express ideas and concepts.
Aurelie Freoua has taken the lead in these events, designing the concept of the evenings, selecting the partners-in-crime and helping sort out the mixed media. In the newest event, during the London Jazz Festival on 14 November, the theme was Reves (Dreams). And three sets started with a recitation by Mervin Scott, supported by a moving projection of the art of Aurelie and Ley Loosh, a dancer Petra Haller and music improvised by a group led by Zac Gvi (with Dave O’Brien, Maurizio Ravalico and Hyelim Kim). By the third set, we appeared to have art created that floated, through use of perspex, and moved by painting on to Petra Haller. We were drawn deeper by the combination of movement and colours to heighten our own self-awareness.
After the performance, there is the way of creating a longer-term ripple of the event.
These performances can be regarded as the public manifestation of a dialogue between art forms that develops, by heightening the improvisational awareness of the participants: translation of a sonority into a colour, a movement of the arm into a chord and so on. In between the events, there is communication and reflection by the participants in the recent events – a sort of debrief – and preparation for the next. These are done at the Salons de Resonances which occur approximately monthly downstairs at the Vortex. As well as the need for the evolution of the website and its content – the visual, aural and conceptual.
It is clear that together all are stilll dipping their toes in the water. But there are clearly routes from the past that can be adapted. For example what happened with Fluxus in the 60s, the Dada and surrealist exhibitions and more that occurred in the 20s and 30s, the manifestos that have consistently been prepared during the past century, such as the Futurists and more. Meanwhile, here at the Vortex, we are more than keen to help the project broaden and deepen.