Portrait 01 The Female Futurist

What are woven together are the portraits of the voices and faces of Andrea Sodomka, Netochka Nezvanova, Tatjana Komarova, and Elisabeth Schimana.

Viewed through the spectral microscope, the human voice – the most archaic of all instruments – is deconstructed into its strands, and morphing technology is used to generate the voice of the virtual futurist.

Not carved out of stone nor cast in iron, the projection beam that gives rise to the bust of the futurist for the duration of the performance is temporary and ephemeral.

15 04 2003 Moscow Forum Festival, Moscow
14 12 2003 Ö1 Kunstradio LIVE from the ORF Kulturcafé
16 06 2004 Xperiment>L#2, Arminius, Rotterdam, curated by Daniela Swarowsky
20 08 2005 Schloss Lengenfeld | Christa Hauer Fruhmann
18 01 2006 Portraitconcert Elisabeth Schimana | Alte Schmiede, Wien



Prologue

After a decade of working in the field of electronic music/art, I have started to search for a different story. In all my years of studying and working in this genre, which is dominated by men in the area of teaching as well as working, there has been hardly any mention of women in the history of electronic music/art. This was what motivated me to start weaving new strands – women's stories – into the whole.

I started with Italian Futurism, which was founded by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. Favored by the Futurists, noise music, the music of machines, can be regarded as a possible origin of electronic experimental music. This was the subject of Luigi Russolo’s manifesto “The Art of Noises”, which he wrote on March 11, 1913.

In this respect, in my search for the futurist woman, I uncovered certain IDEOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES in Italian Futurism – particularly in regard to the “contempt of woman” – which suggested that I was not likely to find a fragment of female futurism here. Nevertheless, an out-of-print book –
“Geschichte des Futurismus” by Christa Baumgarth – gave me what I was looking for.

A Lead

In 1912 the futurist painters Boccioni, Carra, Russolo, and Severini showed their work for the first time in an exhibition in Paris. This offered the painters the opportunity to make friends with the artists of the Paris avant-garde. In the exhibition spaces Marinetti spoke to an audience that included many French artists like Braque, Derain, Metzinger, Gleizes, as well as Picasso.

Valentine de Saint-Point, Lamartine's niece, an artist of the Paris avant-garde, organized a musical and literature soiree, later she joined the Futurist movement, and wrote THE MANIFESTO OF FUTURIST WOMAN. The Futurist Manifesto of Lust was to follow.(Translation Kimi Lum)