“Liquid Music is thinking more broadly about where, why, and with what partnerships to mount a project. What, in the world, is any given project calling for?” – Kate Nordstrum
Emily Wells performs Regards to the End | Photo: Karlie Efinger / Scott Carr
By Liquid Music blog contributor Amy Chatelaine
This week, Liquid Music arrives in the lustrous heart of Paris. Ours is one pulse in the company of performances animating the upcoming Chaillot Expérience, at the invitation of the visionary choreographer Dimitri Chamblas. Over four days, Chamblas will spotlight his current projects, collaborations, and ongoing partnerships.
With a kindred appreciation for the generative valence of movement and sound, Chamblas asked Liquid Music’s Kate Nordstrum to select a performing artist to fill the foyer of the historic Théâtre National de Chaillot. And we are delighted to have Emily Wells – polymathic composer, producer, and video artist – with us for this very special international venture.
But first:
Kate, Dimitri, and Emily trace the confluence of their pathways to the temple of dance in the city of light — a story told in three movements.
I.
Liquid Music x Studio Dimitri Chamblas:
“An artistic conversation that’s only just begun”
Kate Nordstrum reflects on the origins of the ever-developing creative partnership between Studio Dimitri Chamblas and Liquid Music:
I was introduced to Dimitri in 2018 through Ben Johnson, who was then the Director of Performing Arts for the city of Los Angeles (now Director of Arts for the city of Minneapolis). Ben knew that Dimitri had begun collaborating informally with Kim Gordon [Sonic Youth co-founder] and thought that might be something I'd be interested in for Liquid Music. I was working part-time with the Los Angeles Philharmonic that year, planning their centennial season Fluxus Festival (2018-19), so there were opportunities to meet a number of times without agenda in the beginning. I wanted to learn about Dimitri's work and vision, and we found we shared artistic priorities. I was very inspired by Dimitri's energy and spirit of "anything is possible."
Kate Nordstrum outside of Los Angeles at a shooting range, creating the score for Dick Higgins' The 1000 Symphonies in preparation for a Fluxus Festival event. As part of the festival, Kate would hire Dimitri to direct David Lang's crowd out for 1000 voices.
Kim Gordon, Kate Nordstrum, Dimitri Chamblas
Both Dimitri and I have brought each other into our individual opportunities as curators and producers over the last six years. I feel challenged by our dialogue, and honored to be seen and valued by a colleague I admire so much — and sometimes even feel jealous of! Knowing ours is a long-term relationship is probably the most rewarding aspect. This is an artistic conversation that's only just begun.
II.
Chaillot Expérience:
An invitation to “the temple of dance”
Théâtre National de Chaillot | © Patrick Berger
Dimitri Chamblas shares the context of his work with Chaillot, and the theater’s historical significance in France:
Chaillot Expérience was proposed to me, as Palais de Chaillot does for maybe four or five artists every year. Palais de Chaillot in Paris — that's “the temple of dance,” right in front of the Eiffel Tower — it’s this big, amazing building with a program of such incredible curation. Historically, it was the théâtre populaire, which means “the theater for everyone.” And now it's the théâtre de la danse — still totally “populaire,” of course, but with an emphasis on dance as an art form, as a practice.
For Chaillot Expérience, I wanted to start the thinking in relation with my piece takemehome, which I'm showing the whole week in Chaillot. Basically, I wanted to continue exploring new possibilities of the relationships between moving bodies and sounds and music. That’s the whole curation of Chaillot Expérience. There's a workshop for 30 electric guitars. There's a participatory voice piece. There are different performances of dancers and musicians. There's music curation. There's a lot, a lot, a lot of things happening until late in the night. And then from the Palais de Chaillot, it will move to a nightclub to keep continuing — having a different type, though, of relation with moving bodies and music!
Dimitri Chamblas
“I feel very close, in my relationship with dance, to what Liquid Music is standing for: exploring different forms, approaching music in relation to other arts, and presenting in different types of spaces to give access to a large diversity of audience.”
The idea of inviting Liquid Music, inviting Kate, to come and participate is, for me, an invitation to collaborate around this topic — sharing ideas and giving her the possibility to invite an artist to be part of that. She proposed Emily Wells, who I discovered because of Kate. And of course I really loved her music, but also its relation with moving images and archival dance film. And also, I would say, some of the history of dance that she invites in the space of her live performance. So, yeah, I can't wait to have Liquid Music in Paris, and Kate and Emily.
I feel very close, in my relationship with dance, to what Liquid Music is standing for: exploring different forms, approaching music in relation to other arts, and presenting in different types of spaces to give access to a large diversity of audience. All of those goals and values are shared between myself and Liquid Music through Kate's leadership.
III.
Regards to the End:
A centering moment in the “beating heart” of Chaillot
Kate Nordstrum shares what inspired her pick of Regards to the End as Liquid Music’s feature in the Chaillot Expérience:
Regards to the End is an ever-evolving, magical piece of art by Emily Wells that Liquid Music has actively supported over the years. I wanted to deliver something that could bring big feelings into a large space full of bodies — a centering moment in the grand Foyer de la Dance, the "beating heart" of the building. I thought about Emily's brilliant use of archival dance films in her set, interwoven with images of early AIDS activism and extreme climate events, that stun and move viewers in inarticulable ways. Emily's music and visuals enliven the senses and bring people together in body and spirit. Her love of dance and awareness of how music moves in and through the body make her a beautiful fit for Dimitri's Chaillot Expérience.
Photo by Jay Mehal Britter
“Emily’s music and visuals enliven the senses and bring people together in body and spirit.”
Emily Wells offers an intimate look into the life and movements of Regards to the End:
Music, or rather writing music, is a way for me to think, to explore literature, theory, visual art, and then respond through my most sentient language. I think about the climate crisis a lot: it’s at the foundation of life decisions, of worry, of grief. And in wrestling with this presence in my life, I looked for analogs from the past. That’s where I started to find links with the early AIDS crisis — the denial, bureaucracy, enormity, scapegoating of the weak — but those connections were just the door to what became Regards to the End.
I started reading a lot about climate crisis and the AIDS crisis. Then the pandemic descended, and I realized that I needed to expand the scope of my research, that “one cannot survive on terror alone.” So I turned to the people I knew best how to learn from: artists. I fell into their most sentient languages as a way to learn the muscle for myself: the muscle of survival in crisis, the absurd ability to hope and adapt that is innate in the process of making art.
Regards is a relic of that hope and survival. I hope it points to these teachers who, through their work, left us road maps for dealing with enormous unthinkable suffering and complicated togetherness. Their desire for beauty, joy, spontaneity, and most of all each other, was not snuffed out. That gives me courage.
Bringing Regards to Paris
Part of the excitement for me around the coming performance in Paris is the chance to be swept into a larger vision and community of makers. My performances tend to be quite meticulous in their planning and their engagement with the technology I employ. For Chaillot, I’ve tried to give myself a looser leash — and in that, to make way for improvisation and collaboration, including an invitation to Darian Donovan Thomas to sing with me on a few songs.
I started incorporating dance into my video work as a way to be less lonely on stage, and it’s grown into a deep relationship with the form and its history, as well as with choreographers — specifically with my frequent collaborator and friend, Raja Feather Kelly. I also became interested in the way footage of dance, documentations of activism, and captured moments of extreme climate events are linked; something about the way the bodies move in tandem, in reaction, and with tremendous agency, feels like shared language. Projecting these images while I play is a way to extend meaning, and to make more room for the immense emotional selfhood of each individual present.
Photo by Amber Tamblyn
One thing I've learned is that there is a desire, a need, for real human proximity — and that music can help facilitate that. Also, that people in a room together have a power that cannot be simulated. And that making work is in itself a belief in the future.
A few things for climate activism inspired by the early AIDS activists: we have to be talking about it, not mired or alone in fear, and we have to be loud and specific about what we want and need. Significantly, they knew how to inject their protests with both humor and poignancy.
I wish I could say I’ve had some clear epiphany about the future and how to proceed in it through my time sharing Regards. I think I still have more to learn, and more honestly, more to act on. But the one thing I’m certain of: it’s going to take a lot of us to make anything move.
Follow Dimitri Chamblas:
Website: www.dimitrichamblas.com
Instagram: @dimitrischamblas (instagram.com/dimitrichamblas)
Follow Emily Wells:
Website: www.emilywellsmusic.com
Instagram: @emilywellsmusic (instagram.com/emilywellsmusic)
Spotify: Emily Wells
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