{"id":124978,"date":"2018-05-04T12:00:19","date_gmt":"2018-05-04T16:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=124978"},"modified":"2018-05-04T10:10:13","modified_gmt":"2018-05-04T14:10:13","slug":"sound-tracks-an-interview-with-simone-forti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/05\/04\/sound-tracks-an-interview-with-simone-forti\/","title":{"rendered":"Sound Tracks: An Interview with Simone Forti"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Simone Forti, 2012. \u201cSomeone must have handed me a piece of flexible tubing from the hardware store and shown me that I could play it, the pitch rising and falling according to how hard I\u2019d blow through it. It was around 1970. I tied a red kerchief to this horn and called it my molimo, after the instrument the Mbuti Pygmies play to wake up their mother, the forest \u2026 They claim that the molimo is the sound, not the object.\u201d (From the notes in Al Di L\u00e0<\/em>.) Photo: Jason Underhill<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Simone Forti is primarily known as a central figure in American postmodern dance, but her work in movement has always been interdisciplinary. The foundational pieces she called <\/em>Dance Constructions, for instance (first performed at the Reuben Gallery in 1960, and, the following year, in Yoko Ono\u2019s loft), were, as the name implies, sculptural as well as choreographic.<\/em>Lesser known are the soundscapes she\u2019s created, both alone and with others, throughout her career. The first time her sonic experiments received serious attention was in a 2012 gallery show, \u201cSounding,\u201d at the Box Gallery in Los Angeles. The exhibition featured recordings of her soundscapes alongside projections and images of original performances; the gallery included areas with benches, carpeting, and earphones where visitors could, presumably, close their eyes and pay focused attention to those sounds. A piece titled \u201cBottom\u201d (1968) is composed of four five-minute \u201cblocks\u201d of sound: monotonous drumming, three voices holding a chord, a vacuum cleaner, and Forti whistling. Another, \u201cCensor\u201d (1961), involves loud singing accompanied by the noisy shaking of a pan full of nails.<\/em><\/p>\n

Today, Forti is releasing\u00a0<\/em>Al Di L\u00e0<\/a>, her first full-length collection of recordings: nine tracks, compiled with the assistance of the composer Tashi Wada. The Italian title of the album is a slight alteration of the title of one of the tracks, \u201cDal Di L\u00e0\u201d (1972). The former might be translated as \u201ctoward the beyond,\u201d the latter \u201cfrom the beyond.\u201d Forti\u2019s own translation of the song\u2019s lyrics, which she sings in a haunting a cappella, is \u201cI\u2019m awaiting a song from afar, from afar, a song of goodbye from afar. For now I\u2019ve seen the game I was playing, slowly leaving the earth and drifting far among the stars.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Forti was born in Florence, Italy, in 1935, three years before the institution of the Fascist <\/em>leggi razziali, which stripped Jews, like her parents, of both personal assets and civil rights. The family went into exile, eventually settling in Los Angeles. Subsequent years took Forti to Reed College in Oregon, back to California (where she studied with Anna Halprin), and then to New York (where she met other experimental dance, visual, and sound artists). In 1969, she published <\/em>Handbook in Motion, an account partly of her experiences at Woodstock the year before.<\/em><\/p>\n

I was recently passing through Los Angeles, where Forti now lives, and she graciously received me at her home. Wada joined us for our conversation and noted with pleasure that a gold helium balloon still hovered over Forti\u2019s cozy living room, a remnant of a recent birthday celebration. The balloon was in the shape of an infinity sign\u2014\u201cnot to be confused,\u201d Forti said, \u201cwith the number eight.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

In \u201cSounding,\u201d gallery visitors had access to visual images of the original performances. Under what circumstances would you like for people to hear these pieces now that they\u2019re being released purely as sound?<\/span><\/p>\n

FORTI<\/p>\n

I think it would be different in different situations and would depend on what people are most interested in. For instance, \u201cBottom\u201d had four projections and a sound that went with each one. I didn\u2019t start by thinking about the sound, it just was there. It\u2019s almost like a theater piece. <\/span><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

So, if someone were to listen to it as I did, independent of the imagery\u2026?<\/p>\n

FORTI<\/p>\n

That\u2019s interesting, too.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

\u201cBottom\u201d is the one I listened to most, on repeat. The movement within that piece\u2014if that\u2019s terminology you would use\u2014is the vacuum cleaner. In the notes for the album, you say, \u201cAlthough the intention was that these four blocks of sound should each be devoid of variation, the human element brought quite a bit of variation, even in the vacuum cleaner sound.\u201d What you\u2019re referring to as the human element\u2014would you call that musicianship?<\/span><\/p>\n

FORTI<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never thought of it that way. Certainly I was aware that that human element was appearing. And I let it happen, in a very pedestrian way. And I think that took some musicianship.<\/span><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

To let go of the control over the sound?<\/p>\n

FORTI<\/p>\n

That I wasn\u2019t trying to make<\/em> it be interesting. I was recognizing that it was interesting.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Simone Forti, Score for Face Tunes<\/em>, 1967.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

How have your collaborations with other musicians and composers inflected your own experience making sound art?<\/p>\n

FORTI<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve worked with Charlemagne Palestine, I\u2019ve worked with Peter Van Riper, I\u2019ve worked with Jon Gibson, I\u2019ve worked with Malcolm Goldstein, I\u2019ve worked with Tashi, and in a collaboration, both artists always bring what they\u2019re working on, and we see how it works together. Then, over time, we start to be influenced by what the other one is doing or see what aspect of our work seems to function best with an aspect of the other person\u2019s work. So we both bring something to the situation, and that\u2019s how you know if it\u2019s a collaboration that\u2019s going to be successful\u2014if what each one is working on is well suited to the other.<\/span><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

In an interview with Claudia La Rocco in 2010, you say, of Accompaniment for La Monte\u2019s \u201c2 sounds\u201d and La Monte\u2019s \u201c2 sounds\u201d<\/em> (1961),<\/span>\u00a0<\/em>\u201cThen I\u2019m standing there for the duration of the music, which goes on for I think about thirteen minutes and I\u2019m listening to it and the audience is listening to the music, and I have some idea that I help them listen.\u201d I found that very beautiful\u2014the notion of a dance of stillness that in itself allows for the audience to hear something in the sound they might not otherwise hear. Is your attunement as a listener or as a dancer? Or is it as a co-musician, insofar as listening is part of the making of the music?<\/span><\/p>\n

FORTI<\/p>\n

When I dance, I know that it\u2019s partly a good visual experience for an audience member. But more than that, I feel that an audience member can identify with me, and can experience my movement, and what I\u2019m experiencing. I\u2019m hoping that through my behavior as I perform, I\u2019m opening that channel so that someone watching can experience it with me.<\/span><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

I\u2019m intrigued by the notion of listening\u2014not just dancing, but also the act<\/em> of listening, being part<\/em> of the music-making.<\/p>\n

FORTI<\/p>\n

Yes, especially in improvisation, which is all I know. Probably also in scored music, but in improvisation, certainly, you take in the situation, you respond to it, therefore you change it, and take it in again in the following instant. And you respond to it. And, of course, you make decisions as you go along, you have many impulses in relation to what you\u2019re taking in, and you make choices about which impulses to act on.<\/span><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Roland Barthes wrote about what he calls the grain of the voice, which is not really about its granularity in the sense of hoarseness or roughness. It\u2019s something about the voice that gives a sense of the physicality of it as it\u2019s rubbing up against language. Many of the singers I love the most are those where you really get a sense of that\u2014Jo\u00e3o Gilberto, for instance, the great Brazilian singer, who would sing very close to a very sensitive mic, and you could hear the spit on his lips and the hair in his nose as he would breathe. In the a cappella tunes on this album I get this same sense\u2014a rasp in the voice, for instance. You\u2019ve said previously that thought comes not only by way of language but also from what the body knows. What is the relationship between language and physicality in your own vocal performance on the album?<\/p>\n

FORTI<\/p>\n

The vocalizations on the track \u201cLargo Argentina\u201d (ca. 1968) were recorded when I was in my thirties, whereas \u201cCensor\u201d was recorded last year. \u201cDal Di L\u00e0\u201d was also recorded just a couple of years ago. That makes a big difference, because the physicality of a thirty-year-old woman\u2019s voice and an eighty-year-old woman\u2019s voice is very different. In \u201cCensor,\u201d I\u2019m singing as loud as I can, which goes back to my childhood. We went back to Italy the year I turned thirteen, and that\u2019s when I learned a lot of Italian folk songs, from my cousins. And some of the folk songs are just sung out very loud\u2014you just push them out. It has something to do with being in the mountains and pushing these songs out as strongly as you can. \u201cDal Di L\u00e0\u201d is a smaller song. I knew a lot of folk songs in English\u2014American and English folk songs\u2014and I liked to sing them as simply as possible. And I think that\u2019s what we\u2019re getting in \u201cDal Di L\u00e0.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

In the notes, you also say something about being on a train and trying to compete with the sound of\u2014<\/p>\n

FORTI<\/p>\n

The sound of the subway! The subway turning a corner and the screeching! And it could be competing, or it could be the freedom of being hidden by the screech, such that I could sing out in the train, and that was okay, socially. No one heard me anyway!<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Because of the title, I thought at first there was something darker, something you might configure as opposing forces.<\/p>\n

FORTI<\/p>\n

Oh, because the title\u2019s \u201cCensor.\u201d I guess I do think the singing is censoring the screeching of the train, too. So, in fact, it is a kind of competition.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Simone Forti performing Crescent Roll<\/em> in 1979. Photo: Nathaniel Tileston<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

I just read Handbook in Motion<\/em> for the first time recently. We\u2019re celebrating May \u201968, and soon it will be the anniversary of Woodstock. I\u2019m encouraged by how many people are trying to figure out how the late sixties relates to the current political moment. Is that something that you find yourself reflecting on?<\/p>\n

FORTI<\/p>\n

Not really, and I\u2019m kind of embarrassed at how unaware I was back then of the political moment. For instance, I was aware of the Vietnam War, but not very. I didn\u2019t join the marches. I was a young woman, I was at first doing kind of minimalist work, and then doing the Happenings, and then someone said, We\u2019re going to Woodstock, do you want to come with us? The next thing you know someone handed me some Kool-Aid. And it took me a year to come back. At the Woodstock festival, I didn\u2019t stay near the stage to hear the main singers. I hadn\u2019t even especially been following the singers that were the stars. I mean, I knew their names, I\u2019d kind of heard their songs, I\u2019d danced to their songs. But I was more at the periphery where people had made bonfires and made drumming circles. <\/span><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

In Handbook in Motion<\/em> you describe stepping over the bodies of the people at Woodstock, being able to very gently navigate this sea of limbs, even when you\u2019re tripping. It reminded me of a passage in Claude L\u00e9vi-Strauss\u2019s Tristes Tropiques<\/em>, in which he describes walking at night in the forest among the indigenous people who live there. He hears some people in the dark, making love in a very unselfconscious way, and everybody in this community somehow manages to respect one another\u2019s privacy, even though it\u2019s an inherently open environment. He uses a very similar, evocative language to describe that openness and intimacy.<\/p>\n

FORTI<\/p>\n

Yes. Especially calling for respect. Respecting privacy where the privacy exists only through the respect of it. There\u2019s an English folk song, I don\u2019t know from what period, but it\u2019s an old folk song that goes, \u201cWhat care I for house and home, sheets turned back so neatly, oh? Let me sleep in the wide open field the long with my raggle taggle gypsy, oh!\u201d I think that that moment for me expressed that freedom.<\/span><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Why didn\u2019t you stay in that communal living situation?<\/p>\n

FORTI<\/p>\n

This period at Woodstock was something I believed in. Each of us offered others what we had to give. I remember we used to hang up our clothes on the clothesline to dry, and then someone else would see that they were dry, and they would take what they needed, and leave something else. We felt that we were showing the way life should be. But I knew that my folks were sending me a check every month. That check in those circumstances was enough to float a whole situation where people could come and have a bowl of rice and beans for free. But it was part of that whole industrial complex \u2013 we weren\u2019t really these free spirits. And I don\u2019t know why, but suddenly, it dawned on me, This is fun, but it\u2019s not my life. There\u2019s so little time and so much to do.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Barbara Browning\u2019s most recent novel is <\/em>The Gift (or, Techniques of the Body)<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Al Di L\u00e0 is available from Saltern, through Forced Exposure<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

All Images courtesy of Simone Forti and the Box LA Gallery, unless otherwise noted.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Simone Forti is primarily known as a central figure in American postmodern dance, but her work in movement has always been interdisciplinary. The foundational pieces she called Dance Constructions, for instance (first performed at the Reuben Gallery in 1960, and, the following year, in Yoko Ono\u2019s loft), were, as the name implies, sculptural as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1483,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[907],"tags":[33942,3503,33944,33947,17818,1006,33951,55,33946,22897,33953,33949,33952,33950,33907,31005,46,33948,33940,33941,15827,4935,964,33939,33945,33943,19180,25478,3210],"class_list":["post-124978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-work","tag-al-di-la","tag-album","tag-anna-halprin","tag-charlemagne-palestine","tag-choreography","tag-claude-levi-strauss","tag-claudia-la-rocco","tag-dance","tag-handbook-in-motion","tag-hippies","tag-joao-gilberto","tag-john-gibson","tag-la-monte-young","tag-malcolm-goldstein","tag-may-68","tag-modern-dance","tag-music","tag-peter-van-riper","tag-postmodern-dance","tag-reuben-gallery","tag-robert-morris","tag-roland-barthes","tag-sculpture","tag-simone-forti","tag-sound-art","tag-tashi-wada","tag-tristes-tropiques","tag-woodstock","tag-yoko-ono"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSound Tracks: An Interview with Simone Forti<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The renowned dancer, choreographer, and artist discusses her first full-length collection of recordings, from the early sixties to the mid eighties.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/05\/04\/sound-tracks-an-interview-with-simone-forti\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sound Tracks: An Interview with Simone Forti by Barbara Browning\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"May 4, 2018 \u2013   Simone Forti is primarily known as a central figure in American postmodern dance, but her work in movement has always been interdisciplinary. 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