This live stage work for 13 actor-vocalists is lead by performer-director Kestrel Leah and composer Yiannis Christofides—aka PHYSICAL PLASTIC—in collaboration with choreographer Brigette Dunn Korpela and visual artist Dasha Sur.

We conceived Alarm while living in Bed-stuy, Brooklyn, where nightly we experienced a security alarm from a nearby building. Its violent disruption and the physical response it created inspired our initial exploration of the sonic character of alarms in relation to movement. Since, the project has become for us a questioning of boundaries, ownership and power as observed both locally and in the geopolitical scene. Alarm performs ideas of need, limit and transgression (i.e. stealing or trespassing) in the context of capitalist society and its ongoing crises. A full-length choral score by Christofides that uses extended vocal textures and the opposition of silence and its disruption, will be staged with a choreographed vocal ensemble portraying the bystander, the trespasser, and the alarm—and evoking the mythological sirens.

We bring forth the acoustic event of the security alarm as a rupture—an event which signals the current state of affairs, and in doing so, presents us with the possibility for the emergence of new social order. The alarm, as a public performance of danger, sets an example for the violating body and its desire to transgress, to disrupt and renegotiate the limits of its existence. Once it sounds, the divisions between self and other, between public and private, previously hidden in the background, are revealed, as are the networks and infrastructures protecting those boundaries. Alarms implicate us in questions of difference, of desire, and law. For us, Alarm is a rebellion, a cry of conscience from amidst the urban viscera concealing systems of protection, fear and power in infinite webs of wires and cables: an alarm in and of itself that gives physical voice to our unease at witnessing the rapid gentrification of and complicated racial relations in a struggling neighborhood as once neighbors, outsiders and “gentrifiers”.

Our newly formed company is founded upon theater’s inherent capacity to make immanent issues of universal concern. In response to racial and economic segregation, and rising tendencies of nationalism, we make a conscious effort towards international collaboration and a breadth of cultural perspectives, so as to better shed light upon issues both at home and abroad, and confront cultural differences directly, as part of our creative process.

In March 2017, we have been invited to develop this work in residency at Robert Wilson's Watermill Center.

This work has been selected for a 2017 New Music USA grant.

More information about this project: 

https://www.newmusicusa.org/projects/alarm

http://www.physicalplastic.com

Voices: Kestrel Leah, Nathan Nonhof

ALARM vignette 1 (excerpt, 2017)

Yiannis Christofides combines practices in electronic music, soundscape composition, creative sound design and field recording and has a background in media theory and cultural studies.

His music and soundscapes for art installations, performance, and curatorial projects have been presented at leading venues and institutions throughout Europe and the U.S including Centre Pompidou (FR), Lincoln Center (US), The Watermill Center (US), The Athens & Epidaurus Festival (GR), La Triennale di Milano (IT), New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (US), Queen Elizabeth Hall | Southbank Centre (UK), Municipal Theatre of Piraeus (GR), Fonoteca Nacional de México (MX), Passerelle Centre d'art contemporain (FR), Berlin International Sound Art Festival (DE), Cyprus Theatre Organisation (CY), International Festival of Ancient Greek Drama (CY), 3LD Art & Technology Center (US), The Invisible Dog Art Center (US), Point Centre for Contemporary Art (CY), the wulf. (US), Metamatic: The Art Foundation (GR), The Ethnological Museum (CY), Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (US), Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre (CY).

Much of his personal work investigates our experience of place through the use of field recordings as principal material. His particular interest in field recording relates to the contextual aspects of sound and the intersensory experience that it affords.

Yiannis is co-founder of PHYSICAL PLASTIC, a Los Angeles based composer-director partnership with actor/director Kestrel Leah.

He is based in Los Angeles, Athens and Nicosia and works internationally.