VIRIDIAN ENSEMBLE

WOMXN-LED FREE IMPROVISATION & AUDIOVISUAL COLLECTIVE

Viridian Ensemble’s live experiments in music and film have produced some of the city’s most extraordinary contemporary recordings Drawing influence from feminist free improvisation groups such as Les Diaboliques and Feminist Improvising Group (FIG), the womxn-led project’s music features percussion, strings, vocals and woodwind What were the original intentions behind the project, and what draws you to free improvisation?

Laura Phillips: A group of us worked at St George’s Music Hall in Bristol, and were in various art projects and bands. Two members had a really common misogynistic experience and were venting about it. Through that conversation, we thought about creating a space to platform womxn musicians, and find a productive way to channel that anger. I came to the project wanting to show some 16mm film work with musicians in an expanded, performative setting, and to do interdisciplinary work across different genres.

FIG have that mentality, and are second wave feminist trailblazers for that reason. They are punk because of that aspect of being open to the differing abilities of musicians, akin to the Fluxus ideology that art is for all and everyone is an artist. We have a mix of musical backgrounds: how you bring that together to make a common language is where the magic happens. Having an ability to listen, respect and appreciate the serendipity of improvisation is a quality I find interesting. The potential for it not working is what makes it so exciting and different each time. There have been loads of performances that have been awkward, with the film getting chewed up or pedals not working. We can stay within that space and work through it, via dissonance and conflict as well as polyphony or harmony. The draw of improvisation, for me, is more about the process than an end product.

Your record Trotula is a live recording of your final performance at Viridian Ensemble’s original base The Brunswick Club This was a locus for Bristol’s DIY scene until its closure in 2019, notably hosting Thorny events and Howling Owl’s final New Year: New Noise What was your relationship with this venue, and what do you recall from this show?

LP: This was a space where we would practise, and rehearse in the beginning. I was part of the collective there, so I cleaned the toilets, worked the bar, slept there sometimes, shared a studio there and made the darkroom where a lot of the 16mm film was developed.

Dali De Saint Paul: Laura is one of the founders of The Brunswick Club, so it was a hub where we met, practised, performed and partied – a vital space for us. The recording of Trotula was an event created especially for this occasion, where we were surrounded by friends.

I understand the title Trotula refers to the Trotula texts: medieval writings on women ’ s medicine What influence did these texts have on Trotula, and what drew you to them?

LP: I was working at the library at Bristol University. I remember a history PhD student called Jade talking to me about the oblique identity of the author of the text, as well as the battle between church/state and women's freedom, and education around their bodies. I thought it resonated with the feminist critiques the two tracks portray.

In 2020 you released the extraordinary piece ‘CAMRA’ for the Women Composers Collective compilation HER INDOORS What can you tell me about the creation of this piece, and the ideas that fed into it?

LP: HER INDOORS was a compilation raising money for charity work against domestic violence, with tracks from nearly 50 female artists, and women-led projects. We called the track ‘CAMRA’ as a reference to the Bolex camera that we use in making the 16mm film imagery, but also CAMRA as in Campaign for Real Ale: we love the She Drinks Beer events which are organised by Kelly from Good Chemistry Brewery in Bristol. It’s a great initiative to advocate for women and non-binary people in the brewing industries.

The human voice takes many different settings in your music, provided by Dali De Saint Paul (HARRGA, EP/64). Even within the piece ‘CAMRA’, voices are heard chanting in haunting loops, then (towards the track’s close) snorting and gasping What can you tell me about the role of the voice in your music, and how do you see it as relating to Dali’s vocal experiments in other projects?

LP: ‘CAMRA’ was prompted by a practice session where there were instructions to explore breath and laughing. Sighing, laughing, screaming and gasping are expressions which are on the periphery of language, but convey emotion and can be seen as a core part of human expression across different cultures. In the past, Dali has spoken about her performances as related to a form of primitivism. I agree that the voice is essentially the first instrument we use: from the womb, our first actions are to breathe and cry. For ‘CAMRA’ we were really exploring those sounds that seem unconscious, and echoing the tradition in which women circumnavigate patriarchal structure to find new ways of being heard. One example is 19th century mediumship, in which working class women discovered a public voice by channelling the dead. These phantasmagorical ideas also seep into the 16mm filmmaking process.

How would you characterise the relationship between the musical and visual aspects of your work, and what draws you to working in both media?

LP: There is already a massive historical canon of work that is at the intersection between music and images. In our project it's important that the projectionist is seen as a performer, and the projector as an instrument. It makes noises as well as introducing texture, rhythm, colour, hue and tone. I was inspired by seeing a conference in Nantes in which film collectives such as Filmwwerkplaats performed on the bill alongside intense noise bands such as Guttersnipe. I got to experience an updated theory there from Gene Youngblood’s 1970s idea of expanded cinema, which Mackenzie and Marchessault would describe as ‘Process Cinema’: “the creative tradition in alternative filmmaking that is unscripted, improvisational, participatory, and based on the manipulation of the very materiality of film.”

In Viridian Ensemble the 16mm film gives a durational aspect to the work. Although the film is played on a variable speed 16mm projector, it ultimately limits the performance to the material length of the film. I came to learn 16mm skills through attending a workshop at No.w.here Gallery by James Holcombe in 2012. He also invited free-improvising vocalist and trumpeter Phil Minton to lead a session, so these worlds of film and music have always been intertwined in my eyes. The Viridian Ensemble films are all handmade. It's a really slow process of shooting on a reel that only captures 3 minutes of film: the antithesis of high speed digital material. Sometimes you will see some of the people from the band or images made via contact printing: a direct camera-less way of printing film. The infrastructure of 16mm film, hand-processing and using film labs infrastructure is about independent means of production, artisanal making and anti-capitalist models: a bit like DIY or underground music. The films are digitised, so when you come to the shows I project digital loops on top of 16mm footage: blurring the lines between digital and analogue. Essentially, the film adds visual provocations and grounds some of the discussion and thoughts we are having about stuff. The latest shots are all riffing on the idea of rough music and shame, which were ideas circulating around lockdown with the clapping for carers. Filmmaking is such a slow, deliberate, laboured process!

There is a fantastic documentary short from Yesterday’s Witness (1970) in which two women are interviewed about their experiences of being teenagers in the 1890s, including their first impressions of “some sort of little machine”: the typewriter being fairly new technology. The passage I wrote contains no words, only symbols, and it looks like a secret code – some uncanny cousin to morse code and musical notation.

Your work advocates for womxn in the experimental arts from different backgrounds From your experiences performing around the UK, what are your impressions of the access and visibility womxn are given in live music in this country, and what would you like to see change?

DDSP: Having performed a bit more around the UK with other projects, I’m happy to say that things are moving –albeit slowly. Even if you still have a lot of men producing the music which is promoted by the ‘music industry’ I feel there is more interest in womxn’s work. There are the usual supporters of womxn, non-binary and trans people like Counterflows Festival or Supernormal Festival, but over the past few years I have also seen womxn’s work echoed by festivals or venues where women have some key roles: Newcastle’s TPHO and Tusk Festival, Birmingham’s Supersonic Festival and Centrala, and London with New River Studio and Iklectik. But this change is not only for experimental music: Saffron is doing a lot for Bristol’s ‘mainstream’ music scene.

To what extent do you think your music has been shaped by Bristol’s musical landscape?

LP: Massively! I love the smaller DIY promoters (Schwet, Off Grid, Quakclub, CBOD, Improv’s Greatest Hits, Music to Come, Matt Griggs’ improv nights) who are dedicated to putting on loads of weird and wonderful stuff. I also love the DIY collectives and labels.

EB: It’s funny how the musical landscape reflects the physical landscape of the city. I once overheard a guy leading a walking tour boldly claim “Clifton is the heart of Bristol”; I thought “no it fucking isn’t”, but I don’t know where I would locate Bristol’s heart. There’s no specific centre – it’s sprawling. That’s how I would describe the music scene. There are so many pockets and niches to explore, and they all overlap in curious ways. We also have to keep discovering, inventing and investing in places to play, and Bristol provides that. The Brunswick Club is sorely missed, but now there’s Strange Brew and Dareshack: it’s constantly changing and evolving. So many musicians come here with the desire to experiment and collaborate. It’s an exciting place to be for us, especially with the fluidity of our line-up.

While recordings of your performances are available with some digging – from an extraordinary Café Oto performance available via their website to your various compilation contributions – you have resisted presenting a conventional body of studio recording. What draws you to presenting Viridian Ensemble’s music primarily through your live shows, and what would you like to imagine people taking from your performances?

Alive All Together

Your piece ‘Borealis’ from the Glow Worm Society compilation So That We Could Be features a typewriter What inspired the typewriter’s use in this piece, and was anything specific being typed?

Esme Betamax: ‘Borealis’ was created in 2020, when we had to experiment with new ways of creating music together. Unable to record a drum kit in my flat, I looked for other percussion. I love all things mechanical, and the sound of a typewriter is unmistakable. Also, the fact that typing was understood to be ‘women’s work’ speaks to the themes we like to explore.

What I can observe, after 10 years in music, is that womxn are building connections, and people are keen to take some risks in programming more womxn and even challenging artists: the ones that won’t tick the boxes of the ‘great market of female flesh!’ I’m glad to see that, as culture should not comply with a capitalistic agenda. Women, nonbinary and trans people from diverse ethnicities are part of the cultural landscape, and it’s important to break the vicious cannibalistic circle – the necropolitics. I would like to see more womxn, non-binary and trans people in charge, with key roles in curating big events and the money they need to do it!

EB: Space, presence, and physicality mean a lot to us in performance, and I think we all feel that the best way to experience Viridian Ensemble is to become immersed in the moment. This goes for us as performers and also for the audience. There is dialogue across every space we perform in - it’s not a one-way thing. The variety is endless when we respond to different spaces (the weirder the better) and embrace guest musicians. That keeps things exciting, but it’s impossible to fully replicate it in a recording.