Price (BR/CH, 1986)
Residency period: July-September 2020
Mantras for a Club (sequences) is the starting point for a new series of performances in which embodiment, sound and voice engage in a constant state of trial and error. The first act of this series of sequences, Prologue: Mantras for a Club, consisted of an installation at Stadtgalerie in Bern. The exhibition consisted of four large sculptures made of various fabrics shaped by a composition of curved rails. The floor and walls of one of the rooms were covered with soap, perfuming the installation with various scents. This room-specific sound dramaturgy was created together with artist and composer Modulaw.
The most important thing about this body of work may lie in my interest in poetry that deals with the loss of words, the act of grasping meaning through rhetoric, phonetics and their melodies; how the “other”, the misfit or the misunderstanding, is to be perceived as something noisy and fatiguing in society; how words can hold orientation and power, and at the same time exclude race, class, age and gender.
Mantras is a private journey of associations, reflection and affection; a space that questions the agency of language; a vocal study that brings the poetry of language closer to the body with the question: what vibrates in language today?
With a team of musicians and artists, we composed a first demo that will probably be completed and released in the form of 1 single, 1 EP and 1 album in the autumn of 2021. — PRICE
PRICE work is characterised by elaborate soundscapes, costumes and stage design often developed in collaborative constellations. His productions play with the audience’s expectations of the exposed, ostensibly authentic self of the performer, who emotes before their eyes. They are interspersed with pop-cultural set pieces, mechanical sounds, rhythms and his own singing voice. The voice forms a central element of his work. PRICE views it as an acoustic form of emotional communication outside language’s imperative to create meaning.
Music composition and production in collaboration with: Cecile Believe, Tobias Koch, Modulaw and Sebastian Hirsig.
Vocal contributions (four choir tracks): Cecile Believe, Ivan Cheng, Bonnie Banane, Cassie Augusta and Thibault Lac.
"Prologue: Mantras for a Club" is a co-production of Stadtgalerie Bern, Arsenic Lausanne and Theater Neumarkt Zürich
Pictures by Reto Schmid