David Toop
Instruments of Darkness
Performance at La Centrale at 7pm
My improvised performances are born of a curiosity for resonance: how to make the soft, invisible characteristics of a space and its harder limits resonate; how to make materials of all kinds resonate; how to make time resonate, so that durations and our sense of fast or slow are in a complex state of vibration; how to make memory resonate, so that the ghosts of sound and the emptiness of silence penetrate personal history. The materials I use vary: some are conventional musical instruments, others are electronic, still others are acoustic, some are autonomous, others are humble, abject, in a state of decomposition or without limits. All pose the question of what an instrument really is, a conglomerate whose pieces can only be assembled in the darkness of an averted view. (David Toop)
