Prior to the invitation to contribute to this project, we had decided to embark on an audio collaboration. Angelica had just moved to another city and our prospective collaboration would be an exchange that would in some way embody the conversations and ideas we had when we were in the same physical space. 

Audio files would be passed between us… pieces of music, concrete and expressive, voiced observations, snatches of conversation, field recordings, poems, human and animal sounds. 

There would be no timescale or determined outcomes, simply a creative drift, a ludic exploration of what might happen.

During a telephone conversation we had discussed the leap, the risk that presents when crossing into new territory. The raw experience of creative and emotional exposure. This would probably have been quite different had we been in the same location, however, it did offer a sense of the unexpected. I had no idea what sounds would emerge when I pressed play. Angelica had no idea what I would then do with those sounds.

The first files arrived in the form of numbered messages.

This in turn provided the shape of how they are cut into the first edit.

The content is Angelica finding her voice, describing the distance and the sensation of speaking into a void, not sure as to where and how it will be heard.

As a starting point, these were cut into tracks I had made, some sound collages, made from location recordings, some music / audio beds.

Collaboration would create something that the individual participants could not otherwise produce. The result is something that can only happen via that cooperation. There would be a tipping point where the work manifests its own spirit, begins to dictate its own language, rules and mythologies. As we begin to understand that language, the work would progress.

The invitation to participate in ‘Love, Dinner, Flowers and Dances’ presents a moment when our project meshes with another, a detour on our excursion, creating another layer of collaboration.

Our timeframe was divergent from that of this project, i.e. we didn’t have one… and therefore what we offer here, is a snapshot of our opening exchange, the first marks in the new sketchbook.