Friday 5 January 2024, 7.30pm
PRET A CHANTER' is a political work (Opera) as in 'Politi' the life of the city. It is a post-internet, post-cyborg real-time opera that seeks to blur the boundaries between art and life, vocalisations (including singing in multiple and invented different languages but no speaking), different cultures, different economic and post-economy systems and different psychologies.
'Pret a Chanter' is an analogue hack into the gentrification of the city, a reclamation, an alternative universe running according to the laws of string theory, alongside corporate colonisation, a space with no space.
Anyone who steps over the threshold of 'PRET A CHANTER™' must abide by the rules of the opera. Anyone who enters 'PRET A CHANTER' must succumb to the experiment that is opera. Pret a Chanter has been performed at The Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Hear me festival, Czech Republic, Galerie Nord,Berlin, La Plaque Tournante, Berlin and the famous Coffee Corner, Belagrade Road Stoke Newington.
CAFE MANIFESTO
1/ NO SPEAKING. ONLY VOCALISATIONS OTHER THAN SPEAKING ARE ALLOWED.
2/ THE NUMBER 2 IS NOT ALLOWED.
3/ IN THIS CAFE, SPEAKING IS CONSIDERED TO BE ANTISOCIAL. THOUGHTS EXPRESSED IN SPEECH ARE CONSIDERED TO BE AS TOXIC AS SMOKE FUMES SO FOR THIS REASON SPEAKERS WILL BE ASKED TO STAND OUTSIDE UNTIL THEY ARE FINISHED.
4/ ALL LANGUAGES REAL AND IMAGINED ARE WELCOME.
5/ ALL FORMS OF VOCALISATION ARE WELCOME. THIS INCLUDES WHISTLES, GROANS, BARKS ( AND ANIMAL SOUNDS OF ALL DESCRIPTIONS BOTH REAL AND IMAGINED) BURPS, GRUNTS, ULULATIONS, SNORES, VOCAL MULTIPHONICS, OVERTONES, MOANS AND YODELS.
6/ IN THIS CAFE YOU ACCEPT THAT YOU ARE REAL TIME PERFORMERS IN LORE LIXENBERG'S REAL TIME COMPOSITION 'PRET A CHANTER'.
7/ NO PRE COMPOSED SONGS ARE ALLOWED AT ALL.
8/ YOU ACCEPT YOU WILL BE FILMED AND RECORDED.
9/ TOILETS ARE ON THE RIGHT.
10/ ABSOLUTELY NO SPEAKING IN THE TOILET, YOU WILL LET OFF THE ANTI SPEAK DETECTOR.
Lore Lixenberg has evolved a practice based on voice, that has three major features. Firstly, exploring extended vocal techniques and hyper-extensions of the voice (‘BIRD’ and ‘THE BIRD STUDIES’, pieces, that explore language and syntax through birdsong) Secondly, drawing on socially engaged practices (PRET A CHANTER, THE VOICE PARTY) and thirdly, exploring digital technologies and apps for their operatic dramatic potential creating a new form - the APP-ERA, (SINGLR, VOXCOIN, IDENTITY THEFT). Incorporating comedy into her compositions applying bel canto singing into physical theatre, comedy and free-improvisation she works with Simon Munnery, Richard Thomas, Stewart Lee and Complicite (McBurney). She has performed internationally on concert platforms and galleries, opera houses, in operas and has collaborated on experimental installations and vocal performances with experimental composers visual and sound artists like Acquaviva, STELARC, Bruce Mclean, ORLAN, Georgina Starr, Imogen Sidworthy and David Toop. Her stuff has been shown at at The Hamburger Bahnhof , Galerie Nord Berlin, Ikon Gallery UK, The Armory NY, Emily Harvey Foundation NY among others. She published an artist book ‚Memory Maps’, monographic CD ‘The afternoon of a phone’ (£@B). She started THE VOICE PARTY standing in British election of 2019 and will satnd again in 2024. Her vinyl release NANCARROW KARAOKE, a record of Nancarrow piano rolls she transcribed for her own voice multi-tracked is on the De Player label.
