sitting in my chair

14 10 2001 Musikprotokoll, Graz
16 04 2002 Melkweg, Amsterdam, organized by STEIM

The armchair addressed in the title is a very special chair, not a synonym for chairs in general, but exactly this chair whose characteristic screech was the beginning point for the musical design of “sitting in my chair”. The acoustic material consists of these screeches, which were recorded as audio data and then (re)played during the performance. In this very chair the sounds are manipulated simply through the movement of the hands. It’s not a coincidence that Elisabeth Schimana developed this piece in Moscow at the electronic Institute of the Tschaikovski Conservatory, an Institute with the proud name Theremin Center.

As Schimana discovered the theremin years ago, it wasn’t so much the sounds that interested her, but the body and stage presence of this antique instrument that is played without touching. What is the body doing on stage in the age of electronic music? This question with its area of tension between Kraftwerks Puppets and today’s expressively maltreated laptops is uncoiled again and again by Elisabeth Schimana in her work.

The Theremin surfaced as the perfect challenge: for what reason the thereminic antenna technology with its transparent magnetic field as interface are used - as direct sound control or as trigger for completely different mechanisms - it provides the electronic musician a necessity for a physical presence. The physical motion on stage as a category is again scrutinized if in “sitting in my chair” the artist sits almost motionless in her chair. With minimal finger, hand, and head movements, the dense snarl of chair screeches are erased while the stringent lighting is changed one field after the other with every erasing procedure. (nina ross )