I made this piece for K.J. Holmes’s dancework titled HIC SVNT DRACONES, which was performed in many variations over a number of years. The sound-piece accompanies K.J. as she dances a solo. K.J.’s piece is, I believe, about edges - the edges of what is considered sane or acceptable, the edges of what we know or think we know. I was interested in conveying a sense of both order and disorder. The counting is, quite obviously, an attempt at order or control. But it’s also the failure of this - for no two people count alike. By layering the different voices counting to ten (or failing to), I was hoping to highlight the improvisatory nature of even this basic process of ordering time. As the piece moves on, I brought in language and laughter - again, I was interested in the contrast between a person trying to explain something in very logical or rational language and another person breaking out of language into the chaos of laughter. But even there, the logical (logos) fails, becoming ill-logic through repetition and fragmentation. Finally, human language gives way to pure sound, music, a calling voice. I have loved Julia Kristeva’s notion of the tension/oscillation/dynamic between the symbolic (ordered speech) and the semiotic (bodily drives as expressed through sound, non-sense, or grammatical disruption) for a long time. I suppose this piece is an attempt to perform that oscillation. I should say too that the counting is a nostalgic tribute to Philip Glass since my parents were huge Glass fans and I kind of grew up on Einstein on the Beach, and now my son, who is a cellist, is also a lover of Glass. And so there’s a little bit of a nod to my family and its history and future in the way the piece starts.

Julie Carr, There Be Dragons, 2019
Sound installation, running time, 13 minutes

Installed as part of the New Movement exhibition at The Cost Annex in Boston, MA on June 7, 2019.

Julie Carr, There Be Dragons, 2019

Spinal Process was recorded in a grand piano after involved exploration of the spinal column.

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