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$26.99 DV
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JOHN ZORN & RICHARD FOREMAN
Astronome DVD
(Tzadik)
Astronome was first conceived in 2004 at a chance meeting on the street in Manhattan between two MacArthur geniuses, John Zorn and Richard Foreman. Elder playwright Foreman encouraged Zorn to compose an opera in vocalize (no actual words) that he would then adapt at one of his annual Ontological-Hysteric Theatre productions at St. Marks. The music was written for Zorn's Moonchild drum-bass-vocal trio consisting of Joey Baron, Trevor Dunn, and Mike Patton, and is absolutely pummeling in the style of two of Zorn's other creations: Painkiller and Naked City. Foreman staged the opera a few years later, putting the actions of seven characters in the same emotional world as Zorn's mostly aggressive and jarring music. To call this a collaboration or choreography in the traditional senses of those words would be off the mark. What Foreman and Zorn have succeeded in doing is marrying two modes of expression (visual and auditory) in a superbly mysterious manner, such that ideas and symbols, sometimes fleeting, dart, float, appear, disappear, reappear, dance, and hop on the stage in a most captivating manner -- a most welcome experience in an age when art and its relatives generally tell us exactly what to think/feel. Since there is no conventional narrative in Astronome, the meat of the opera can best be described from words from Foreman's Ontological.com
as, "a work dominated by ecstatic groans, grunts and babbling, and explores the initiation of a group of people into a world where ambiguous behavior alone leads to freedom -- perhaps under the tutelage of the necessary 'false messiah.'"
For DVD, the opera was filmed live in H-DV by Henry Hills using footage from multiple cameras over the course of seven nights. In so doing, Hills and Foreman had many perspectives from which to edit and draw the viewers attention to important action/objects on the stage, such as the hanging upside-down Medusa, the grotesque green-faced demonoid dude, the other six "players" adorned in a variety of combinations (harem-garb, black nose-pieces, and butcher aprons) that would make Duchamp proud, the curious Hebrew writing covering much of the set, and the massive nose and mouth, into and out of which papers, people and other things made their ways. Of course, this is not your old man's opera, but rather a mood or atmosphere to occupy for about an hour. The actions on the stage and the many symbols adorning the hectic set are not so much to be analyzed Jungian-style or otherwise, but rather to be surrounded by and considered. Perhaps the viewer receives clues as to the artists' "intent" in the handful of the narrator's creepy-voiced sometimes-recurring uttered maxims: "Stage Fright", "I don't see it, you don't see it, nobody sees it except the man stumbling upon it quite by accident", "There is nothing important in carefully laid plans", and "It's very easy to choose the negative path to avoid things that are painful." Anxiety with a touch of mania and humor seems to be the perfume that Foreman and Zorn are emitting in Astronome, and like the "smell" of New York City living, it isn't repugnant, but rather, it's a challenge one must face if one is to last in this environment: one can't live here for six months and have it all figured out or conquered. Likewise, subsequent viewings have enhanced my appreciation for Astronome. Both are well worth the effort, methinks. [KC]
Order DVD by Texting "omcdjohnastronome" to 767825 |
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