MY SOCIAL MUSCLE for five performers will have its premiere on Dec 19 in Bangkok as part of the Thailand New Music and Arts Symposium TMAO. It will be performed by members of TACETi ensemble. The work is a co-commission with Forum Neue Musik Luzern, which will host its Swiss premiere on April 10/11, 2021.
Guided by a voice that oscillates between instructions of a yoga session, a photo shoot and a gym workout, the five performers become a flexible muscle of sound. Sometimes in the middle of the audience, sometimes widely spread around it, they distribute contracting patterns over changing distances. With the small differences triggered by the speed of sound, the tightly knight patterns start to flicker with increasing space between the performers. My Social Muscle replays the ritual of amassing social capital – through movement and pose – using a body that vibrates over the whole festival site. The muscle becomes a metaphor for the physical and mental effort of self-representation in public constellations. And amid the audience’s guided movement in between the musicians, they become part of that muscle, experiencing its activity from the inside.
