Sounds of white paper

The meeting develops as follows. We start drinking tea and talking a bit about what happened in our personal lives the last weeks. Then we start preparing instruments, papers and camera. Then we ‘play’ for about an hour or more just as it comes. Then we talk about what happened. Some images that pass by:

- white papers were put between the strings one after the other while playing. The sound died and became white;
- a pathway of white papers was created. The only possibility of setting a step was choosing the next paper;
- the rope that connected the players with a flexible line was moved by the hands. The bow wanted to interfere. It was constantly attacking the flexible line. The line was curling spontaneously around the fixed and stretched bow;
- when the papers quieted the instrument the voice was still there. We heard simple songs and exotic non-existing languages coming out all the time in a constant stream;
- the papers are one by one torn out of a sketchbook. Often they are folded in two and then torn in two parts or four parts. This activity of multiplying and splitting is going on all the time;
- the music that started energetic and concrete is gradually ending in white silence. The papers that started with isolated blank parts are summing up all the time to end in a complete white landscape;
- I bent my head towards the instrument and listen close to the strings while producing overtones. The painter does the same, but doesn’t however produce overtones;
- sometimes the cello becomes a stage for dialogue: two papers in conflict inbetween the strings or different ropes around the strings in strong confrontation;
- both musician and painter are dressed in black (with brown shoes) surrounded by white papers.

These abstract meetings appear, and this is almost a paradox for abstraction, to be very meaningful and ‘storytelling’ at the same time. You cannot say what really happens in this free flow of expression. But it is always clear when it fits, when it is strong, when it tells a wordless story. It feels sometimes like producing archetypal image-sound. Now this work is still in the laboratory. There will come however a moment after a year (or two?) when it will have found its form and will be presented publicly.

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