When I bought tickets, I had no idea what this event was all about. The press blurb said “A multi-channel sound installation, building-site and live performance set up, investigating concepts of demolition and construction while engaging audience and performer in interaction with physical and acoustic approaches to these concepts”. That didn’t help much. Neither did a leaflet I read which talked about the importance of sound design as part of a building’s architecture. However, I wasn’t going to turn down the chance to mooch around the award-winning architectre of the Laban centre in Deptford. In a former life I used to live in South East London, and from the train window every morning I would glimpse this softly-hued polycarbonate creation backing itself up asgainst the filthy Deptford Creek, seemingly cowering from the nefariously-minded buildings which surrounded it.
I also figured at least I’d manage to squeeze in a cheeky half and a game of bar billiards at the Dog and Bell, but a sadistically prompt start time of 6.30 put paid to such thoughts. When I arrived, Oxford’s Jasper Leyland (who had an excellent album last year on Alexander Wendt’s 12×50 label) was already midway through his set. I heard calming waves, some gently processed xylophone, children running up and down some stairs, a baby screaming…wait, what was going on?
Turns out they were here for the main event. For this, Alexander Wendt left us to squish our creative juices into the sand, and use this concrete to build some wooden brick constructions. The stifling heat in the theatre (like a PFI hospital, it felt like the building’s designers had perhaps skimped on the air-con) meant I had to dash out for some water, and by the time I returned, the six tables were fully occupied by children (of all ages) improvising distinctly non-BREEAM architecture. However Wendt soon sent them scarpering when he activated the speakers under the tables; a loud sculpture-collapsing buzz and rumble leaving at least one young Norman Foster-wannabe in tears.
In front of a wave-form projection, Wendt then played back a piece he had composed from the sounds of the construction process: giant mechanical piledrivers, trucks reversing, bare-bummed builders wolf-whistling…or rather in this case, echoing footsteps, a rustle of wooden brick, and every so often a child’s plaintive wail. Suddenly with a WHUMP! WHUMP! he took out two towers. Did this have anything to do with the relationship between sound and architecture? Or was Wendt just being a particularly vengeful god (from some strange, child-hating denomination) smiting his subjects? I have no idea. However, as the waveforms on the screen became similarly angry, the sound took centre stage, filling the theatre with polycarbonate-piercing high notes.
Douglas Benford (aka si-cut.db) followed with a reconstruction of one of Wendt’s previous demolition pieces. This was a gently pulsing mass, with Benford adding delicate layers of xylophone and squeezebox as he went, with scattered chatter drifting in and out of the mix. At one point a loud almost subterranean rumble emerged, as if a tube train was passing below, and I found myself mulling on the peculiar nature of South East London soil which meant that the tube couldn’t get much a foothold down here. When Janek Schaefer followed Benford with what began as an extremely relaxing spoken word piece (for which we were invited to lie on the floor), a combination of my beginning to drift off to sleep (which he would have taken as a compliment) and return transport worries convinced me that I should begin my journey bedwards. I left none the wiser as to any deeper significance of what I’d seen and heard, but still glad I’d made the trip to this stunning – if somewhat stifling – location.
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