ELLEN C.
COVITOWORKS
AFTER
WEATHER[ ANY 01 ]

ANY 01 | Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather© 2014 No Collective (You Nakai, Kay Festa, Earle Lipski, Jay Barnacle, Ai Chinen), Ellen
C. Covito, Lindsey Drury, Cody Eikman, Shu Nakagawa, Esther Neff, Shinichi Takashima.

Ellen C. Covito

Published by Alredy Not Yet 2014
ISBN: 978-1-312-45009-7

Cover image: Ellen C. Covito, Score of Composed Improvisation G (2011),

Works

as realized by No Collective.

After

Weather

Cover and book design by You Nakai, Kay Festa & Earle Lipski

Edited and Compiled by No Collective(You Nakai, Kay Festa, Earle Lipski, Jay Barnacle, Ai Chinen, et al)

ALREADY

NOT

dedicated

to

YET

is

a

consummating

publisher
the

run
age

by
to

members
come

by

of

No

Collective,

makingavailable

unprecedented texts that question and/or traverse the boundaries of art, theory,fiction,

and

other

curiosities,

primarily

via

the

mediumoflanguage.

http://alreadynotyet.org
http://nocollective.com

already not yet
Brooklyn, Ne w York

Send inquiries, requests, proposals and surprises to: info@alreadynotyet.org

2014

COVITOELLENCCOVITOELLENCCOVITO
Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKSA C K N O W L - GENERAL USAGE ELLEN
C. Of Specters
EDGEMENTS INSTRUCTIONS C O V I T O and Spectacles
Acknowledgments

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather

General Usage Instructions

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather

Ellen C. Covito

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather

pated in the three concerts of Covito’s music co-orga-mance artists, dancers, painters, or poets, who seem

nized by No Collective. They include Sean Ali, Gelsey
Kaia Gilge, Travis Just, LJ Leach, Brian McCorkle, Ivan
Naranjo, Esther Neff, Catherine Provenzano, Aliza Simons, Maria Stankova, Masami Tomihisa, Akiva Zamcheck(from the first concert in New York, Brooklyn), Tomoko
Hojo, Takumi Ikeda, Satoko Inoue, Motoharu Kawashima,

Satoko Kono, Midori Kubota, Tomoki Tai, Masuhisa Naka-

Acknowledgments

mura, Haruyuki Suzuki, Hikaru Toho, Hiroshi Yokoshima(from the second concert in Tokyo), Luis Tabuenca andDevika Wickremesinghe (from the third concert in New

General
Usage
Instructions

Ensemble for Experimental Music and Theatre, and Lind-

In early 2012, Kay Festa discovered the “score” of

I

0

the

onlineOverlaying her scholarly focus with her artistic con-repository

cerns, Covito’s early works consisted in attempts to(http://uploaddown-

apply theoretical structures and ideas surrounding en-

vironmental problems to music, which soon led her toexplore the lineage of twentieth century music from a

Ellen C. Covito

distinct perspective. For one thing, Covito realizedthat the fundamental issues of music were formally no
different from those of ecology or feminism: the endless process of setting and erasing dichotomies, ofperformance. Unlike most of so-called ‘new music,’

differentiating what belongs to one side (“us”) and notwhich is not much more than a moniker for a certain

to the other (“them”), and of effacing even that differ-style of music, there was something actually new here,

Kay Festa, You Nakai & Earle Lipski

ence so that “we” could have more and more. A mechanism

which also refelcted upon the endeavors of the post-that obviously resonated with the political violenceM
war avant-garde from a fresh perspective.
Moreover,that surrounded her childhood.

The basic unit of structures is differentiation, andthus the creation of dichotomies. There is no absolute way of getting rid of dichotomies (male/female,composition/improvisation, composer/performer, artist/

Of Specters
andSpectators

spectator…), because, for one thing, they do not really exist. But we all know that we all see, hear, andthink through things that do not really exist. Thesefilters of reality haunt us like ghosts, and haunt us
recurrently despite our desperate attempts at exorcism(a spectator is a specter!). And perhaps out of fatigue
we choose to confound them with reality. But the only
plausible way of dealing with them, as I see it, is tochange them, and to keep changing them to show that they
can be changed.

For me, the function of art lies precisely in thisEllen C. Covito

necessarily localized and tentative securement of potentials and possibilities for changes. Otherwise anyAthis was an utterly strange‘composition.’ As a com-poser, Covito had written down not a single note, had

1 0

ing us to use their documentation for this publication.
Lastly, we thank Ellen C. Covito for her enthusiastic

001

on

up when the same pages are ripped open during thefrom Spanish. Also, we are grateful to Shu Nakagawa,

000

G

O
aY peculiar instruction
whose succinct wording only

served to amplify its idiosyncrasy: to glue all thepages of a score and play whatever notes that show

U

Esther Neff, and Lindsey Drury for generously allow-

0

Improvisation

loadperform.net/) and sent the link to You Nakai. You
clicked the link. On the downloadable PDF score was

us an indispensable hand in translating Covito’s texts

support in making this book possible.

improvising, as a continuation of her interest in themechanism underlying theories of ecology and feminism.

‘Upload..Download..Perform.net’

history per se. It is mythical, and hence it is recurrent.

third time in her life, and began composing as well as

to appreciate what we make, works that other musicians
and composers tend to dismiss or ignore.

ComposedYork, Queens). These concerts would not have happened
if not for our brilliant co-curators: Brian McCorkle
and Esther Neff from Panoply Performance Laboratory,

sey Drury from Dreary Somebody. Ana María Alarcón lent

afterwards. In college, while studying environmental

sciences, Covito turned to music once again for theY

Bell, Corinne Cappelletti, Diana Crum, Lindsey Drury,

be the driving force that builds history, but it is notnotorious “dirty war”) that took over Argentina shortly

F

002

0

2 0

tives solely concerned on how the performer should

use a given score—and this usage could be applied toEany kind of score written by any composer. Evidently,

E the content of theit seemed, the composer was making
score secondary to its use. Eventually we learned that
all the other works in her “Composed Improvisation”
and“ImprovisedComposition”
Lseries

took

the

same

highly strategic and often times humorous approach toscores. Laudably original, Covito’s work thus became
our fascination.

skroW:A

003

given work of art would seem too fragile, too transient

Knowing more about the hierarchical structures govern-

instructed
not a single way to produce sound. DirecD006

0

and thus utterly impotent in the face of radical es-

ing the actual production of music performances led Co-

6 0

vito to focus on the too easily dismissed but actually
not so easily dismissible dichotomy between composition

and improvisation. Ever so articulate, she does this byintroducing distance between the performer and what is
performed, while removing the distance between the actof composition and performance.

007

008

tablishments and implementation of establishments via

0

IMPROVISED COMPOSITIONS (2011- )Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

lieve in structures and I aim to devise events which
unbalance and reconfigure imposed structures. This may

grew up playing music amidst the political turmoil (theity of music being written and performed today. Yet,

we admit to finding a strange reassurance in the factthat it has mostly been theatre directors, perfor-

IMPROVISED COM- S T R A I G H T
POSITIONS (2011- ) LINES (2013- )
0
0
0
8
61

Of Specters and Spectacles

I do not believe in historia (“history/story”). I be-

Born in Buenos Aires in the year which saw the birth of
the first female president in the world, Ellen C. Covito

For a long time, we have felt distant from the major-

We thank first and foremost all the brilliant musicians,
composers, choreographers and dancers who have partici-

technological, economical and/or political channels.

8

But it is the very tentative and impotent character ofartworks that allow them to return without any care tohistory. In other words, art serves its purpose, precisely because we don’t confound it with the so-called
reality or life. So we fight ghosts with ghosts.

009

ImprovisedCompositions(2011- )92

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather

A:Works

088

089

F
M Ellen C. Covito B
Works After Weather
0 9 00 9 4
1 1 2
IMPROVISED COMPOSITION F (2011)

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKSCOMPOSED IMPROJVISATIONS (2009-) 0 2 0L
01
20 2 2I M P ROV I S E D
CO M P O S I T I O N

T
0 1 6

0 10

F

choreographer-dancer chooses one dancer to pair with,which once decided, may not change. The choreogra-

pher-dancers choreographs in real-time, and transmits

the movement verbally or gesturally to his/her dancer
throughout the performance. The pairing is, however,
never discussed neither among the choreographers, norwith the dancers themselves. So any dancer may poten-

tially react to any instruction from any choreographer.
Contact Improvisation will, at last, be interesting.

The ending is also instructed by the choreographerdancer.

> Gelsey Bell, Corinne Cappelletti, Diana Crum,
Lindsey Drury, Kaia Gilge & LJ Leach performing
ImprovisedF(Brooklyn,

2012)

093

Human Factors and

PERCUSSIONS/REPER- the Collision Problem C
1 0 4 1 1 4
CUSSIONS (2014- )AD
10
2 1 0 81 1 8
Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | B: Words

E
M
GR
0 2 4 0 3 00 4 6 0 5 2

IDVA
0 7 0 0 7 20 7 8 0 8 4

Composition

092

01 1

S
C
B
P
0 5 4 0 6 00 6 40 6 8

2011

A piece for equal number of choreographer-dancers anddancers. All dancers and choreographer-dancers appear
on stage; the latter is also free to move around. EachsdroW:B

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | APPENDIX: CONCERT PARAPHERNALIA

WeatherOn
Accessing The Authority of Covito’s Per- Theof
Our
BodiesThe Music of Composition andInterview
withElEllen C. Covito Its
Outside former Pedagogy len C. Covito

1

2

2 1

12 2
:XIDNEPPA
trecnoC
ailanrehparaP

1 54

B:Words2

8 1

6 1 4 2The Music of Ellen C. Co- PercussionsEllen C. Covito vito no Ongaku
NewYork T o k y o Repercussions
1 5 4 1
5
8 1
6
2
3

1 23

APPENDIX:
ConcertParaphernalia

15 5Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather

Acknowledgments

We thank first and foremost all the brilliant musicians,
composers, choreographers and dancers who have participated in the three concerts of Covito’s music co-organized by No Collective. They include Sean Ali, Gelsey
Bell, Corinne Cappelletti, Diana Crum, Lindsey Drury,
Kaia Gilge, Travis Just, LJ Leach, Brian McCorkle, Ivan
Naranjo, Esther Neff, Catherine Provenzano, Aliza Simons, Maria Stankova, Masami Tomihisa, Akiva Zamcheck(from the first concert in New York, Brooklyn), Tomoko
Hojo, Takumi Ikeda, Satoko Inoue, Motoharu Kawashima,
Satoko Kono, Midori Kubota, Tomoki Tai, Masuhisa Naka-

Acknowledgments

mura, Haruyuki Suzuki, Hikaru Toho, Hiroshi Yokoshima(from the second concert in Tokyo), Luis Tabuenca andDevika Wickremesinghe (from the third concert in New
York, Queens). These concerts would not have happened
if not for our brilliant co-curators: Brian McCorkle
and Esther Neff from Panoply Performance Laboratory,
Ensemble for Experimental Music and Theatre, and Lindsey Drury from Dreary Somebody. Ana María Alarcón lent
us an indispensable hand in translating Covito’s texts
from Spanish. Also, we are grateful to Shu Nakagawa,
Esther Neff, and Lindsey Drury for generously allowing us to use their documentation for this publication.
Lastly, we thank Ellen C. Covito for her enthusiastic
support in making this book possible.

001

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather

General Usage Instructions

For a long time, we have felt distant from the majority of music being written and performed today. Yet,F

we admit to finding a strange reassurance in the fact

Ythat it has mostly been theatre directors, performance artists, dancers, painters, or poets, who seemto appreciate what we make, works that other musicians
and composers tend to dismiss or ignore.

General
Usage
Instructions

In early 2012, Kay Festa discovered the “score” ofComposed

I

Improvisation

G

on

the

‘Upload..Download..Perform.net’

onlinerepository(http://uploaddown-

loadperform.net/) and sent the link to You Nakai. You
clicked the link. On the downloadable PDF score wasO
aY peculiar instruction
whose succinct wording only

served to amplify its idiosyncrasy: to glue all thepages of a score and play whatever notes that show
up when the same pages are ripped open during theperformance. Unlike most of so-called ‘new music,’

U

which is not much more than a moniker for a certainstyle of music, there was something actually new here,

Kay Festa, You Nakai & Earle Lipski

which also refelcted upon the endeavors of the post-M
war avant-garde from a fresh perspective.
Moreover,this was an utterly strange‘composition.’ As a comA
poser, Covito had written down not a single note, hadinstructed
not a single way to produce sound. DirecD

tives solely concerned on how the performer should
use a given score—and this usage could be applied toEany kind of score written by any composer. Evidently,

E the content of theit seemed, the composer was making
score secondary to its use. Eventually we learned that
all the other works in her “Composed Improvisation”
and“ImprovisedComposition”
Lseries

took

the

same

highly strategic and often times humorous approach toscores. Laudably original, Covito’s work thus became
our fascination.
002

003

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather

General Usage Instructions

Latching onto this discovery, we began to plan a con-her absence. Soon after the first concert, composer

cert of Covito’s music in New York. Earle Lipski con-

Elizabeth Hoffman interviewed You about the staging

tacted Issue Project Room who had been interested inof Covito’s works, which was subsequently published in

Covito’s music, but the curators of the experimental

the journal Perspectives of New Music (Winter 2013).

music venue wanted to see previous documentations of

A number of people have started teaching pieces fromher concerts to know what was to be expected in ad-

the “Composed Improvisation” series in MFA seminars.

vance. No such materials existed, since Covito feared

Grafting Covito’s idiosyncratic approach to the cur-that fixed documentation could misleadingly emphasize

rent practices and discourses of experimental music,

the “compositional” aspect of her works at the expense

and to see what new endeavors might emerge—this hasof diminushing the necessity of “improvisation.” Thebeen our shared interest. Our hope with this publica-

brilliant composer and musician Brian McCorkle fromtion, which brings together most of her works after

Panoply

projectthe early exploration of Musica del Tiempo (Musicaround this time, and it was through him that Vaude-

Performance

Laboratory

joinedtheof Weather/Time)—hence the subtitle—along with theo-

ville Park agreed to host us. With luck we managed

retical essays contemplating her approach as well as

to assemble a group of twelve excellent musicians,

an exclusive interview with Covito herself, is none

as well as four dancers led by choreographer Lindsey

other than to instigate more of these already ongoing

Drury. Over the course of a month, as we prepared for

discussions.

the concert constructing the giant floor score for
Composed Improvisation M, or trying to write a score

April 2014, New Yorkwith glow-in-the-dark ink for Composed ImprovisationL, we learned how the apparent simplicity of Covito’s
instructions often occluded the actual amount of labor required to stage them. You had some issues withthis matter which he wrote down in his essay containedin this publication.
Ellen C. Covito’s first concert outside Argentina washeld on May 24, 2012, and attracted a fair numberof Brooklyn audience members who responded with excitement. After the Brooklyn concert, we curated twoother concerts of Covito’s work: the second concert
in September 2012 at Shibuya Koen-dori Classics inTokyo, in collaboration with Ensemble for Experimental Music and Theater, and a third one in April 2014
at the Woods Cooperative Space in Queens, New York,as part of {The Room} series in collaboration with
Dreary Somebody. Regrettably, distance has precluded
the composer from attending any of these concerts but
her works have been gaining wide interest in spite of
004

005

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather

Ellen C. Covito

Born in Buenos Aires in the year which saw the birth of
the first female president in the world, Ellen C. Covito
grew up playing music amidst the political turmoil (thenotorious “dirty war”) that took over Argentina shortly
afterwards. In college, while studying environmental
sciences, Covito turned to music once again for thethird time in her life, and began composing as well as
improvising, as a continuation of her interest in themechanism underlying theories of ecology and feminism.
Overlaying her scholarly focus with her artistic concerns, Covito’s early works consisted in attempts toapply theoretical structures and ideas surrounding environmental problems to music, which soon led her toexplore the lineage of twentieth century music from a

Ellen C. Covito

distinct perspective. For one thing, Covito realizedthat the fundamental issues of music were formally no
different from those of ecology or feminism: the endless process of setting and erasing dichotomies, ofdifferentiating what belongs to one side (“us”) and not
to the other (“them”), and of effacing even that difference so that “we” could have more and more. A mechanismthat obviously resonated with the political violence
that surrounded her childhood.
Knowing more about the hierarchical structures governing the actual production of music performances led Covito to focus on the too easily dismissed but actually
not so easily dismissible dichotomy between composition
and improvisation. Ever so articulate, she does this byintroducing distance between the performer and what is
performed, while removing the distance between the actof composition and performance.
http://ellenccovito.com

006

007

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather

Of Specters and Spectacles

I do not believe in historia (“history/story”). I believe in structures and I aim to devise events which
unbalance and reconfigure imposed structures. This may
be the driving force that builds history, but it is nothistory per se. It is mythical, and hence it is recurrent.
The basic unit of structures is differentiation andthus the creation of dichotomies. There is no absolute way of getting rid of dichotomies (male/female,

Of Specters
andSpectatorscomposition/improvisation, composer/performer, artist/
spectator…), because, for one thing, they do not really exist. But we all know that we all see, hear, andthink through things that do not really exist. Thesefilters of reality haunt us like ghosts, and haunt us
recurrently despite our desperate attempts at exorcism(a spectator is a specter!). And perhaps out of fatigue
we choose to confound them with reality. But the only
plausible way of dealing with them, as I see it, is tochange them, and to keep changing them to show that they
can be changed.

Ellen C. Covito

For me, the function of art lies precisely in thisnecessarily localized and tentative securement of potentials and possibilities for changes. Otherwise any
given work of art would seem too fragile, too transientand thus utterly impotent in the face of radical establishments and implementation of establishments via
technological, economical and/or political channels.
But it is the very tentative and impotent character ofartworks that allow them to return without any care tohistory. In other words, art serves its purpose, precisely because we don’t confound it with the so-called
reality or life. We fight ghosts with ghosts.

008

009

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

skroW:A

A:WorksEllen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

Composed
Improvisations(2009- )Brian McCorkle playing Composed Improvisation E
during the set-up for the concert (Brooklyn, 2012)

COMPOSED IMPROVISATIONS (2009-)

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS“Composed Improvisations and ImprovisedCompositions are attempts to deal withwhat I see as problematic in improvisation and composition. For the former,
the physical-psychological continuity
between the performer and the performance,

which

ultimately

reducestheperformance to what the given performer
is able, ready, and willing, to do (afeminine problem); for the latter, theinstitutional-hierarchical gap between
the composer and the performer, which
potentially reduces the performance toa predetermined plan (a masculine problem). My solution: to introduce dis-

Covito’s diagram depicting the relationship between composition and improvisationtance between the performer and what
is performed, as well as to remove thedistance between the act of compositionand performance.”
014

015

COMPOSED IMPROVISATION T (2009)

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

CO M P O S E D
I M P ROV I SAT I O N

T

2009

Version A: Gather as many performers as possible. All
performers wear a T-shirt with fragments of scores
printed or written on. The score can be newly composed, or can be a transcription of a “found-score.”
No clef signs should be used to provide maximum flexibility for available instruments. Prepare two special
T-shirts with barlines for the beginning and ending of
the piece. Each performer starts playing after s/hesees the T-shirt with the beginning barline. During theperformance, the performers must constantly move aroundand play whatever fragment of score (on the T-shirts ofother performers) that they see. They each stop playing when they see the T-shirt with the final barline.
The performer with the final barline T-shirt may choose
to hide from the other performers for as long as s/hesees fit.
Version B: Same as Version A, but the entire performance
happens in total darkness. Each performer carries aflashlight or a candle, or wears a headlight.
Version C: Version for dancers and musicians. The dancers wear the T-shirts. The musicians sit around the^ Score of Composed Improvisation T (front and back) as
realized by No Collective (Brooklyn, 2012)

dancers and perform the visible score on the T-shirts.

> Sean Ali, Gelsey Bell, Travis Just, Brian McCorkle, You Nakai,

Dancers dance to the music. The same instruction for the

Maria Stankova, Masami Tomihisa, Akiva Zamcheck perform-

beginning and ending as Version A applies.

Ivan Naranjo, Esther Neff, Catherine Provenzano, Aliza Simons,ing Composed Improvisation T, with Lindsey Drury wearing
the final barline T-shirt (Brooklyn, 2012)

016

017

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

018

COMPOSED IMPROVISATION T (2009)019

COMPOSED IMPROVISATION J (2009)

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

CO M P O S E D
I M P ROV I SAT I O N

J

2009

For a pair of a composer and a performer. An exploration of the primordial contact between the score-astext and the performer-as-reader. The composer writes
a musical score which entails not only musical notes
but also jokes. Compose the relationship between thenotes and jokes contrapuntally. The performer performs from sight-reading. In addition to performing
the notes correctly he reads all the jokes which may
trigger unintentional sonic (expressive) responses ornot.

> Brian McCorkle performing Composed Improvisation J

with a score written by Esther Neff (Brooklyn, 2012)

02 0

0 21

COMPOSED IMPROVISATION L (2010)

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

CO M P O S E D
I M P ROV I SAT I O N

L

2010

For any number of performers, but no more than four.
If there are more than two performers, they should bepositioned as far away as possible from one another.
Each performer selects an instrument that s/he either
doesn’t know how to play, or can only play poorly. S/
he practices this instrument until s/he is able toperform by sight-reading from a given score, but only
very erratically. When this state is attained, practiceno more. The performer(s) then writes a new score, ortranscribes a “found-score,” using a luminous (glow-inthe-dark) marker. If there are more than one performer,
the chosen score should be an ensemble piece that accomodates all the instruments. In the performance, thelighting of the venue is set as dark as possible to makethe reading of the glow-in-the-dark score possible, andthe visual recognition of the instrument(s) impossible.

022

0 23

COMPOSED IMPROVISATION E (2010)

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

CO M P O S E D
I M P ROV I SAT I O N

E

2010

For any number of performers, but no less than four.
Write a score, or transcribe a “found-score,” in theform of an eye-chart so that the notes gradually decrease in size as they proceed. Use the Snellen chart
as model and arrange the notes in eleven vertical rows.
The exact number of notes in each row may not follow
the Snellen chart but must increase according to thechanges in size. The size of notes should follow the
Snellen chart but with the following modifications: thestandard optotype size should be vertically divided toaccommodate three notes (four staves). The fifth staff
should be added keeping the same interval. So a noteshould be 29.6 mm (88.7 mm/3) tall on the topmost row(20/200), 2.96 mm tall on the eight row (20/20), andso on. Arrange the intervals between the rows to accommodate note stems and ledger lines. When written
instruction is used, the letter size should also follow the Snellen chart. The green and red blocks usuallyinserted after the sixth and eighth rows respectively
in the Snellen chart, may or may not be used. At theperformance, all the performers stand twenty feet awayfrom the score and perform in unison. Each performer
drops out when s/he can read no more. The piece ends
when the last performer drops out.

^ Sean Ali, Gelsey Bell, Travis Just, Brian McCorkle, You Na-

kai, Ivan Naranjo, Catherine Provenzano, Aliza Simons, Maria
Stankova, Masami Tomihisa & Akiva Zamcheck performing
Composed Improvisation E (Brooklyn, 2012)

02 4

0 25

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKSCOMPOSED IMPROVISATION E (2010)^ Travis Just, Catherine Provenzano & Maria Stankova
performing Composed Improvisation E (Brooklyn, 2012)> Tomoko Hojo, Takumi Ikeda, Satoko Inoue, Motoharu Ka-

washima, Satoko Kono, Midori Kubota, Tomoki Tai, Masuhisa^ Score of Composed Improvisation E as realized by No Collective (Brooklyn, 2012)026

Nakamura, Haruyuki Suzuki, Hikaru Toho & Hiroshi Yokoshima
performing Composed Improvisation E (Tokyo, 2012)0 27

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

02 8

COMPOSED IMPROVISATION E (2010)

0 29

COMPOSED IMPROVISATION M (2010)

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

CO M P O S E D
I M P ROV I SAT I O N

M

2010

For as many number of performers as possible. To be
performed in a venue with no risers or separate stage
space. Prepare a score that is the same size and shapeas the floor of the concert venue. Use paper or fabric. In case of paper, let the movement of the audience
upon it cause tears and rips. The score can be newly
composed, or a “found-score” may be transcribed. Start
writing on one side of the score. When the space isfilled up, fold the score in half and continue writing.
And so forth until the score can not be folded anymore.
The size of the notes should be modified in relation
to the size of the given space. The performance starts
with the score covering the entire floor of the venue.
Performers must find a position/location from which
they can read the entire score. Each performer may
start playing as soon as s/he secures an adequate position. When all the performers finish playing all thevisible notes, the score is folded in half, and the performers reposition themselves to resume their playing.
The piece ends when the score can be folded no further.
Duration is not specified but performers should never
dilly-dally.

^ Brian McCorkle walking on the laid out score of Composed
Improvisation M (Brooklyn, 2012)> Brian McCorkle and Masami Tomihisa folding the score ofComposed Improvisation M (Brooklyn, 2012)

03 0

0 31

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

03 2

COMPOSED IMPROVISATION M (2010)0 33

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

034

COMPOSED IMPROVISATION M (2010)0 35

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKSCOMPOSED IMPROVISATION M (2010)< / ^ / > Sean Ali, Gelsey Bell, Travis Just, Brian McCorkle,

You Nakai, Ivan Naranjo, Catherine Provenzano, Aliza Simons,

Maria Stankova, Masami Tomihisa & Akiva Zamcheck performing
Composed Improvisation M (Brooklyn, 2012)

03 6

0 37

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

03 8

COMPOSED IMPROVISATION M (2010)0 39

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

040

COMPOSED IMPROVISATION M (2010)0 41

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKSCOMPOSED IMPROVISATION M (2010)^ / > Tomoko Hojo, Takumi Ikeda, Satoko Inoue, Mo-

toharu Kawashima, Satoko Kono, Midori Kubota, Tomoki Tai, Masuhisa Nakamura, Haruyuki Suzuki, Hikaru
Toho & Hiroshi Yokoshima performing Composed
Improvisation M (Tokyo, 2012)042

Photo by Shu Nakagawa

0 43

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

044

COMPOSED IMPROVISATION M (2010)

0 45

COMPOSED IMPROVISATION G (2011)

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

CO M P O S E D
I M P ROV I SAT I O N

G

2011

For any number of performers. Write or find a notated
score of at least three pages, preferably longer. The
performer(s) may choose to rehearse or not. Stick all
the pages of the score together with glue or any otheradhesive. At the concert the performer(s) proceeds byripping each page open, and playing whatever note(s)that show up. The performer may choose to collaborate
with a page turner.

^ Score of Composed Improvisation G as realized by

No Collective (Brooklyn, 2012)

046

0 47

COMPOSED IMPROVISATION G (2011)

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS< Travis Just, Maria Stankova & Masami Tomihisa performing
Composed Improvisation G (Brooklyn, 2012)^ Tai Tomoki performing Composed Improvisation G(Tokyo, 2012)

048

0 49

COMPOSED IMPROVISATION G (2011)

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

Hiroshi Yokoshima performing Composed Improvisation G(Tokyo, 2012)05 0

Photo by Shu Nakagawa

0 51

COMPOSED IMPROVISATION R (2012)

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

CO M P O S E D
I M P ROV I SAT I O N

R

2012

For a solo performer. The performer selects a pieces/he doesn’t know and requires practice in order toplay in public. At every rehearsal, the piece is performed (at least once) from the beginning to the end.
This is recorded every time and transcribed onto atransparent sheet of paper. The transparent sheets areprepared in advance with staves of equal size on each.
Once the rehearsals are finished and the piece is readyto be performed, all the accumulated transcriptions on
the transparent sheet of paper are superimposed on topof each other. Align the superimpositions using thestaves of each sheet. In the actual performance, theperformer plays from the superimposed score.

^ / > Score of Composed Improvisation R as realized by

Masami Tomihisa and No Collective (Brooklyn, 2012)

05 2

0 53

COMPOSED IMPROVISATION S (2012)

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

CO M P O S E D
I M P ROV I SAT I O N

S

2012

A musical exploration of quasi-ESP exercises (after
Vito Acconci). The composer writes a score in a stateof sensory deprivation: i.e., blindfolded and earplugged. At the concert, the performer plays the scorein the same state of sensory deprivation, while attempting to read the score with utmost concentration.
The composer sits in the audience seat and shouts out
directions and suggestions to the performer.

^ Akiva Zamcheck writing the score for Composed
Improvisation S blindfolded, and with headphones on> Brian McCorkle performing Zamcheck’s score while

Zamcheck gives directions from the audience seat
(Brooklyn, 2012)

054

0 55

COMPOSED IMPROVISATION S (2012)

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS^ / > Motoharu Kawashima writing the score for

Composed Improvisation S, while Tomoki Tai waits(Tokyo, 2012)05 6

Photo by Shu Nakagawa

0 57

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

05 8

COMPOSED IMPROVISATION S (2012)

Photo by Shu Nakagawa

0 59

COMPOSED IMPROVISATION B (2012)

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

CO M P O S E D
I M P ROV I SAT I O N

B

2012

For any number of duos. If more than one pair, a score
written for the given number of instrumentalists should
be found (or composed). The instrumentalist plays byreading from the score. His/her partner stands behind
him/her. At any given moment the partner can cover
the eyes of the instrumentalist. Whenever this occurs the instrumentalist should try as much as s/hecan to continue playing as if nothing has happened.

^ Composed Improvisation B performed by Catherine
Provenzano & Masami Tomihisa (Brooklyn, 2012)> Composed Improvisation B performed by Masuhisa Nakamura & Hikaru Toho and Tomoko Hojo & Midori Kubota(Tokyo, 2012)

060

061

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

062

COMPOSED IMPROVISATION B (2012)

Photo by Shu Nakagawa

063

COMPOSED IMPROVISATION C (2013)

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

CO M P O S E D
I M P ROV I SAT I O N

C

2013

For a solo percussion performer. Place a carbon copy
paper over a blank staff paper placed on the surface
of a percussion instrument(s) to inscribe every hit
the performer makes. Perform a short piece following a“found-score” or a composed score of no longer than one
page. When this first piece is performed until the end,
use the carbon copied score (the staff paper with theinscribed hits read as notes) as the next score, with a
new staff paper on the instrument, but adding the firstscore on top of the carbon copy paper. Keep adding theused scores on top of the carbon copy paper to increase the buffer each time, until no hit is inscribedanymore, and thus there are no more notes to play.

> Score of Composed Improvisation C as realized by
Luis Tabuenca and No Collective (New York, 2014)

064

065

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

066

COMPOSED IMPROVISATION C (2013)

067

COMPOSED IMPROVISATION P (2013)

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

CO M P O S E D
I M P ROV I SAT I O N

P

2013

A duet for any kind of instrument. One performer “prepares” an instrument in any sort of way.

Another

performer who does not know how the instrument was
prepared, performs a found or a composed score until
the end, no matter what happens.

068

069

COMPOSED IMPROVISATION D (2014)

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

CO M P O S E D
I M P ROV I SAT I O N

D

2014

A duet for any kind of instrument. One performer tries
to play a “found” or a composed score on any given instrument. S/he may not touch the instrument, but must
use the body of the other performer to play the piece.

^ / > Luis Tabuenca & Devika Wickremesinghe

rehearsing Composed Improvisation D (New York, 2014)

07 0

0 71

COMPOSED IMPROVISATION V (2014)

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

CO M P O S E D
I M P ROV I SAT I O N

V

2014

A duet for any kind of (preferably fragile and/or
expensive) instrument. One performer tries as muchas s/he can to play a “found” or a composed score on
the instrument. The other performer tries as much ass/he can to prevent the first performer from playing.

> Luis Tabuenca & Devika Wickremesinghe performing

Composed Improvisation V (New York, 2014)

07 2

0 73

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

07 4

COMPOSED IMPROVISATION V (2014)0 75

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

07 6

COMPOSED IMPROVISATION V (2014)

0 77

COMPOSED IMPROVISATION I (2014)

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

CO M P O S E D
I M P ROV I SAT I O N

I

2014

Arrange musical-note magnets on a metal surface with
sufficient resonance. The arrangement may replicate
a “found-score” or be composed anew. One performer
holds the metal score/instrument as the other plays it
or tap dances (on) it as accurately as possible. All
modifications to the score that occur as the result of
performance should subsequently be read into the performance. The score is repeated until all the magnetic
notes fall off from the surface. The performer holding
the score/instrument may choose to move or not.

Score of Composed Improvisation A as realized by
No Collective (New York, 2014)

07 8

0 79

COMPOSED IMPROVISATION I (2014)

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

^ / >

Luis

Tabuenca&

DevikaWickremesinghe

performing Composed Improvisation I (New York, 2014 )

080

081

COMPOSED IMPROVISATION A (2014)

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

CO M P O S E D
I M P ROV I SAT I O N

A

2010

Compose or find a score (films may also be used) fordance and percussion. Only metal instruments should
be used, and the dance should be performed in contact
with a metal surface(s). Rehearse to coordinate therhythms as well as possible. In performance, attachstrong magnets to drum sticks and the dancer’s body(including shoes).

^ Drum stick with magnets attached< Devika Wickremesinghe wearing a suit and high-heels withmagnets attached> Luis Tabuenca & Devika Wickremesinghe performing
Composed Improvisation A (New York, 2014)

082

083

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

084

COMPOSED IMPROVISATION A (2014)

085

92

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

ImprovisedCompositions(2011- )IMPROVISED COMPOSITIONS (2011- )Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS“Improvised Composition F has been
primarily performed as dance, andM

primarilyasmusic,

but

genre

designations are not essential—thedifference is between two modes of
conveying what is composed: verbal/
gestural instructions (a femininemode) and written scores (a masculine mode). In fact, the first canalso be arranged to be performed as
Score fragments on a music stand during a performance of Improvised Composition M (Brooklyn, 2012)

music, and the second as dance (orany other genre where the issue of
performance and composition is relevant, such as theater). But yes,the dichotomy persists.”

088

089

IMPROVISED COMPOSITION F (2011)

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKSI M P ROV I S E D
CO M P O S I T I O N

F

2011

A piece for equal number of choreographers and dancers. All dancers and choreographers appear on stage;
the latter is also free to move around. Each choreographer chooses one dancer to pair with, which once decided, may not change. The choreographers choreographin real-time, and transmit the movement verbally or
gesturally to his/her dancer throughout the performance. The pairing is, however, never discussed neither
among the choreographers, nor with the dancers. So any
dancer may potentially react to any instruction fromany choreographer. Contact Improvisation will, at last,
be interesting. The ending is also instructed by thechoreographer.

> Gelsey Bell, Corinne Cappelletti, Diana Crum,
Lindsey Drury, Kaia Gilge & LJ Leach performing
Improvised

090

Composition

F(Brooklyn,

2012)

091

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

092

IMPROVISED COMPOSITION F (2011)093

IMPROVISED COMPOSITION M (2011)

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKSI M P ROV I S E D
CO M P O S I T I O N

M

2011

A piece for equal number of composers and performers.
All performers and composers appear on stage; the latter
sit at a table(s). The composers compose in real-time.
As soon as he/she finishes a fragment of any length,that fragment is passed to a performer (or performers)
who immediately perform(s) it. The performer plays thefragment until the end, or until another fragment ispassed over to him/her. If no new fragment appears by
the end of a given fragment, the performer repeats thesame part again, until a new fragment is given. The composer-performers may not collaborate. The performance
proceeds on a first-come, first-served basis, so thecomposer who writes his/her fragment most quickly, andto the most number of performers, gets to be performed
the most. However, reasons to decide otherwise may exist: (a) one wants to have his/her fragment repeated (ala minimal music) over and over again, (b) one likes
what the other composer has composed and decides to listen, or (c) one prefers to work on a single performer
rather than dealing with the whole group. How thesedesires and interests differ and are adjusted or not
between the composers should not be decided in advance.
The ending is also composed by the composer.
Sean Ali, Gelsey Bell, Travis Just, Brian McCorkle, Ivan Naranjo, Aliza Simons, Maria Stankova & Masami Tomihisa
performing Improvised Composition M (Brooklyn, 2012)

094

095

IMPROVISED COMPOSITION M (2011)

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

Score

Fragments

from

ImprovisedComposition

M(Brooklyn, 2012)

096

097

IMPROVISED COMPOSITION M (2011)

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

TakumiIkeda,

SatokoInoue,

Motoharu

Kawashima,

Tomoki Tai, Haruyuki Suzuki & Hiroshi Yokoshima performing
Improvised Composition M (Tokyo, 2012)098

Photo by Shu Nakagawa

099

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS“Straight Lines is a project in progress in which afound orchestral score is entrusted to an individual
who has no previous knowledge on how to read musical

Straight Lines(2013- )notation, but is nonetheless equiped with other formsof knowledge that s/he might employ to decode the score.
The individual works with an orchestra, giving the musicians instructions as to how the music should be played.
The instructions must be as precise as possible, andderived solely from his or her reading of the decoded
score. Any questions that might arise in the process of
decoding, as well as questions that may be posed by themusicians, must be answered through further reading of
the score. Currently, I am working with the following
individuals: (a) a police detective, (b) an 8-year-old
elementary school student, (c) an archaeologist, and,(d) a Star Trek aficionado.”Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

Percussions/
Repercussions(2014- )Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

HUMAN FACTORS AND THE COLLISION PROBLEM

Pierre Schaeffer’s notion of “acousmatique” refers to
the separation of sound from the sounding body whichcaused it. This disembodiment of sound was crucial for
Musique Concrète which aimed to establish a whole new
system of musical organization for recorded sounds. The
erasure of its physical origin facilitated the soundmaterial’s entry to a new systemization solely based on
the purity of reduced listening. But of course neither acomplete disembodiment nor total reduction can actually
be achieved. Outside the safe havens of the Parisian RTF
electronic studio, the absence of sounding body first

Human Factors
and theCollision Problem

and foremost triggers the listener to search for, or
deduce at least, the unknown origin of the sound. Thisis for a simple reason that in real life, encounters
between bodies can be violent and even deadly. So thelistening body attempts to identify, visually or conceptually, the sounding body to avoid the dangers ofcollision. For the composer to close his eyes and forgetthe physicality of sounds, he needed to retrieve into
his studio, safely detached both in space and time fromany effects of the sounding body. In this way, the notion of acousmatique along with reduced listening bases
itself on a primal reduction of collisions—an annulment

Ellen C. Covitoof physical percussions and repercussions.
But the very technology that enabled this annulment
also adds an ironical twist to the tale. For the spatial
and temporal separation of sound from its body reliedon recording technology, and the recording and playing
back of sound—from microphones to magnetic tape, andfrom the tape to the loudspeaker—were enabled and regulated primarily via the mechanism of electro-magnetic forces. In this trajectory, sound waves were firsttransduced into electric signals through the workingsof a coil and a surrounding magnet inside the microphone, which then were used to move the electromagnet so

104

105

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

HUMAN FACTORS AND THE COLLISION PROBLEM

that a magnetic flux would be applied to the oxide on
the tape. The play-back simply reversed this process,outputting the sound from the loudspeakers by transducing the electric signal back into sound waves. The
invisible power of magnetic field thus made it possible
to make sounding bodies invisible. But what is magnetism if not the very force responsible for attracting
and repelling bodies? The very technological condition
for acousmatique disembodiment thus turns out to be thecentral force to dismantle the Schaefferian reductionof collisions. The works from the “Percussion/Repercussion” series all hinge on this curious paradox of thenotion of acousmatique under the metaphoric and literalrubric of magnetism. They intend to demonstrate, as
well as feed upon, the fact that percussions and repercussions of bodies are not only the source of accidents
but also constitute the primordial condition of sound,and therefore, music.

106

107

PERCUSSION/REPERCUSSION A (2014)

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

Co-composed withCody Eikman

P E RC U SS I O N
R E P E RC U SS I O N
Place

a

A

Radio-Controlledcarinsidea2014

container

turned upside-down. The container can be of any material but should be big enough to enclose the RC car.
Both performers are blindfolded. One tries to hit thecontainer while the other manipulates the car, andgives instructions on how to reach the car. Other
obstacles may be placed around the stage. It is also
possible to use two cars and have each operated by
one performer simultaneously.

^ / > Luis Tabuenca & Devika Wickremesinghe
performing Percussion/Repercussion A (New York,2014 )

108

109

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

110

PERCUSSION/REPERCUSSION A (2014)

111

PERCUSSION/REPERCUSSION B (2014)

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKSP E RC U SS I O N
R E P E RC U SS I O N

B

2014

Performer places his/her head inside a metal can. The
can should be big enough to cover the performer’s eyes,with blank staves inscribed on the top surface. In thisstate, the performer throws magnetic musical notes up
in the air and tries to catch them with the can on his
head. Use as many magnets as necessary.

^ / > Luis Tabuenca performing Percussion/Repercussion B

simultaneously with Devika Wickremesinghe performing Percussion/Repercussion C. The “found task” for the latter was topick up any magnetic note that Tabuenca failed to catch (NewYork, 2014 - rehearsal)

112

113

PERCUSSION/REPERCUSSION C (2014)

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKSP E RC U SS I O N
R E P E RC U SS I O N

C

2014

Performer balances a metal plate or a cymbal on his/her head, and executes a found task until it falls to
the floor. The task can be any other piece that can be
performed simultaneously. Use as many plates or cymbals
as necessary.

114

115

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKS

116

PERCUSSION/REPERCUSSION C (2014)

117

PERCUSSION/REPERCUSSION D (2014)

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | A: WORKSP E RC U SS I O N
R E P E RC U SS I O N

D

2014

One performer sings a found or composed score. The other performer plays a different found or composed scoreon the body of the first performer.

> Luis Tabuenca & Devika Wickremesinghe performing
Percussion/Repercussion D (New York, 2014)

118

119

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | B: Words

sdroW:B

B:Words

ON ACCESSING: THE MUSIC OF ELLEN C. COVITO | YOU NAKAI

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | B: Words

As she herself has proclaimed at least on one occasion
C.

(1), Ellen C. Covito is not the first composer to explore

Covito, “Losthe potentials of the seemingly oxymoronic term “composed

1

Ellen

UmweltendeMúsicas,” inimprovisation.” John Cage reconciled with his long hatred

Contra Para-

towards improvisation late in his life, engaging in a se-

guas: Revista de Música

ries of compositions to which he bore the very word that

Protesta 24,

had troubled him throughout his career. These pieces, the2009.

composer explained, circumvented the general danger thatlurks in improvisation—that of falling back to one’s boring
habits and subjective tastes—by taking recourse to eitherof the following two tactics: 1) the use of indeterminate
instruments in which the causal relationship between their

On Accessing
The Music ofEllen C. Covito

manipulation and the resultant sound is unknown and thus
uncontrollable; 2) the use of “variable” timebrackets which
are flexible in terms of their beginnings and endings, aswell as the exact timing for the occurrence of sounds inside them. The former approach created pieces such as Childof Tree (Improvisation 1) (1975) or Inlets (Improvisation2) (1977) in the mid-1970s; the latter resulted in a series
of works collectively entitled c Composed Improvisation(1987-90) towards the end of the following decade (and all
the so-called “number pieces” actually, though these were
never referred to as ‘improvisation’ per se).
Christian

Nevertheless, as most things concerning Cage, this resolu-

Wolff, “Tak-tion with improvisation had an unacknowledged precedent.

2

You Nakai

ing Chances:
From a con-

Already in the late 1950s, Christian Wolff, upon facing a

versationshortage of rehearsal time before a concert, began intro-

with

Vic-

tor

Schon-

Cues:

brackets he had previously learned from Cage: “What we did

Writ-

was a kind of improvisation—the score dealt only with spaces

ings & Conversations.

of time and groups of notes from which we could select.” (2)Cologne:In the program note for Duo for Pianists I (1957), the first

MusikTexte,
1998, 72.

piece composed in this manner, Wolff described his approach

3

Wolff,

with a peculiar wording: “an experiment in ‘composed’ impro-“Programvisation.” (3) In the subsequent years, Wolff would pursue

Note for Duo

the logical extension of these initial experiments, develop-

for Pianists
I(1957),”

ing an intricate system which employed sonic cues (mis)heard

in

Cues,

by performers during performance. Thus, the brackets are

488.

122

ducing a certain degree of freedom into the system of timeinfield,”1 23

ON ACCESSING: THE MUSIC OF ELLEN C. COVITO | YOU NAKAI

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | B: Words

not just “variable,” but they remain indeterminate until thenotation (and instrument, albeit to a lesser extent). Curi-actual performance. One prime motive to move in this direc-

ously, this paraphrase brings Covito’s Composed Improvisa-

tion, Wolff explained, was the fact that David Tudor always

tions closer back to Cage—not to his later improvisational

prepared determinate scores from any given indeterminate

pieces, but to his much earlier pursuit of graphic scoresgraphic score, successfully relinquishing all indeterminacy

beginning in the 1950s. For the basis of Cagean graphic no-by the time he performed it on the piano. Around the sametation was a simple, yet radical, recognition: as a graphic

time, however, Tudor had begun to tackle the same problem oncomposed of points and lines, any notation is indeterminate

his own: implementing electronic amplification to his piano

to begin with (and herein lies the crucial difference between

to attain a state where “you could only hope to influence”

his and other composer’s—such as Morton Feldman’s—approach).

(4) the instrument. In both cases, then, indeterminacy is 4
obtained in the phase of performance through the interven-in

Determinacy, in other words, is never an attribute of a given

Ray Wilding-score; it is rather a correlative of the convention that gov-

QuotedWhite,“Da-

tion of an external element that cannot be fully composed vid

Tudor:

erns the translation from the graphics on paper to the notes

beforehand. For Wolff, it is the fluctuating sonic cue that 10

selected

to be performed (though Cage himself too often confounded

serves as a real-time score; for Tudor, it is the indeterminate instrument.

realizationsof

this fundamental insight with a facile fetishization of thegraphic
andgraphic; and others, of course, followed suit.) Cage could

related per-thus refute with a simple argument the blind belief in anscoresformance

Accessed via these historical precedents, the distinctness (1973),”Los

singular relationship between the score and sound, sharedof Covito’s Composed Improvisations becomes readily appar- Angeles:

Da-among so many of his contemporary composers: “If it is on

ent: while preserving the determinacy of both the instrument

vid

Papers, Get-

and the score, it is the access to them that her works render ty
indeterminate. Thus, for instance, in Composed Improvisa-

Tudor
Research

Institute,Boxtion L (2010), the necessity of light to see the score, as Folder 2.
well as the instrument, is subverted through the use of a19,

5 John Cage,
Silence:
Lectures andpaper, then it is graphic.” (5) In other words, a (graphic)
score for Cage could be thought of as a giant indeterminate

Writings.

machinery (which includes the performer) that obfuscates

Hanover:any determinate causality between its input and output. But

Wesleyan
University

unfortunately, this indeterminacy exists only for the com-glow-in-the-dark score; Composed Improvisation G (2011) dis-

Press, 1961,

poser. As the performer inside the machinery, Tudor spenttorts the physical articulation of the score pages, whereas

177.

days and weeks making determinate performance scores out ofin Composed Improvisation T (2009), the generally presumed

Cage’s indeterminate graphic notations. The composer’s solu-

singularity and staticity of a score is nullified; Composedtion succeeds in eradicating the score’s predetermined con-

Improvisation E and M (2010) both play around with the scaletrol over the performance, but it does so only by relegatingof the score and of the individual notes respectively, put-the same control to his performers.

ting into question the appropriate distance for perceivinga score (an important precursor piece which implements theRather than establishing a definite answer, Cagean indeter-same principle to instruments, is Toshi Ichiyanagi’s Dis-

minacy remains therefore merely a way to procrastinate thetance (1961)); Composed Improvisation J (2009) extends the

problem of control, leaving it to be solved within the timesame problematics to time, by exploiting the lack of temporalof performance. Tudor and Wolff ’s struggles to overcome thisbuffer generally presupposed in the act of sight-reading.

issue have already been depicted. Covito’s solution, however,takes place right in between that of Cage and Tudor/ Wolff.

Grasped from a slightly different angle, Covito’s indeter-

On the one hand, she preserves Cage’s idea of rendering theminacy can be seen as being located within the physicalvery reading of the score (the composition) indeterminate,conditions that govern the visual intelligibility of music
12 4

1 25

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | B: Words

ON ACCESSING: THE MUSIC OF ELLEN C. COVITO | YOU NAKAI

but on the other, she enacts this very indeterminacy in the

The performer’s reading process of the score is treated as areal-time of performance (as improvisation). What differ-given when the writing process is put into question, and theentiates her strategy from countless other employments ofprocess of obtaining scores (whether composing or transcrib-graphic notation is the shift from readability to visibility

ing them) never becomes part of the performance when thethat she applies to the Cagean model when transferring it tofocus is on the visibility of the ready-made notation. Im-

the phase of performance. The score is present at the per-provised Composition thus assumes that instrumentalists canformance, but no longer functions as a determinate control-

always sight-read; Composed Improvisation, that scores areling device over the sounds to be produced—and not because

always found. For this reason, it is interesting to noticewhat is written remains ambiguous and merely suggestive (anthat the most recent of her compositions, Improvised Compo-

elusiveness which tends to be bartered quickly with a fetishsition S and R (2012) seem to be attempts to deal with thisfor the graphic), but be cause the physical conditions whichissue. The former by an uncanny setting of equality between

allow a score to be seen in the first place is altered. The

the process of writing a score and performing it (in addi-

question thus becomes focused on how things are read, and nottion to the usual removal of accessibility); the latter by

what. Hence, the notion of “found-score”—the score need not

demanding a radical annulment of the very procedure required

be invented; it merely suffices for it to be found.

to write the score (which is none other than the process ofrehearsal) in order to perform it. Sure, the results might

As for the two part Improvised Composition F+M (2011), Covi-be less visibly entertaining in these works, but more seems

to’s focus seems to have switched from the performer and theto be kept in sight. (And that leaves us pondering about theact of reading a score to the composer and the act of writing

only remaining level in Covito’s works that never seems toa score. It is still possible to observe—rather tenaciously—

be questioned nor relativized: her linguistic instructions.)a resonance with Cage’s 0’00” (4’33” No.2) (1961) where thecomposer, at the premiere, chose as the instructed “disciplined action,” the writing of instructions for the same

You Nakai either makes music, dance, haunted houses and other works

piece with contact microphones attached to his pen. Thus,

as part of No Collective, or publishes books and other parapherna-

the act of composition is itself staged as performance.

lia as part of Already Not Yet, or does research on music and other

But the differences are also obvious, for Covito preserves

curiosities and writes papers about his findings. His account on

the basic distinction between the functional roles of theEllen C. Covito’s music and the works of No Collective can be readcomposer and performer: the former writes what the latterin “The Music of Ellen C. Covito: An Interview with You Nakai byrenders into music. Both what is written, and the process

Elizabeth Hoffman,” Perspectives of New Music (Winter, 2013).

of its rendition, remain determinate. The only intervention
here is again on the level of accessibility. The singular andpredetermined access to performers is cancelled by the pluralization of the composers/choreographers who either rush
to provide their scores to the performers who wait on a firstcome, first served basis in M, or must rely on a unconfirmed
pairing with a given dancer in F.
Maybe there is something that Covito’s Improvised Compositions and Composed Improvisations both leave out of sight.
12 6

1 27

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | B: Words

THE AUTHORITY OF COMPOSITION AND ITS OUTSIDE | SHinichi Takashima

Why is it that in the production process of music a line isdrawn between “composers” and “performers”? In the case ofdance, for instance, it seems that the maneuvering of one’s
own body constitutes an equal, if not a more basic, condition
as choreography for the imposition of control over otherpeople’s bodies (a “pure” choreographer is almost an impossibility). Being a dancer thus precedes being a choreographer. In comparison, however, it is as if all composers start
off by losing their own bodies, turning themselves into
ghostly figures who lack the hands and the feet required to

The Authorityof Composition
andIts Outside

enact a performance. Or would it be more accurate to say thatthe ephemeral nature of music requires the planner to double
as the documentarian of the executed plan? The existence ofa score certainly contributes to the reproducibility of agiven music. But does the coupling of score and performance
permeate and legitimate the entire genre of music? These are
all pertinent questions, given that the existence of a ‘composer’ could be seen as nothing more than a white elephantwhose only role is that of preserving the antiquated production model wherein a pre-conceived idea becomes realized
through particular channels of materialization.

For instance, it might seem that Fluxus, whose works simplified many of John Cage’s methods and short-circuited theminto brief comedy-like performances, advocated an anti-music
music. But what they actually practiced was a deductive musi-

Shinichi Takashima

cal fundamentalism. In the Fluxus movement, the relationshipbetween a score and a performance was regarded as a type of
axiom that could not be validated by any other system beyond
its own existence. Once a certain time frame is constituted
through the relationship between the score and performance(instruction and execution), this becomes established as music. The particular material could be anything—water drops,
telephone calls, or sneezes. The content is arbitrary. Even
the question of what kind of sound is produced as a resultof executing the score is not of prime importance. In otherwords, the process of expanding the material of music canonly be accomplished formally. In order to render even an ab-

12 8

1 29

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | B: Words

THE AUTHORITY OF COMPOSITION AND ITS OUTSIDE | SHinichi Takashima

stract notion such as “contingency” into something that canno necessary causal relationship. Perhaps a more adequate

be manipulated (or an object of cognition), one needs firstcomparison in music to the relationship between surface andand foremost to enclose it inside a frame. There is no way

supportto deviate from the frame without setting it up in the first

And indeed, there has been attempts to create music solely

place. That is why Fluxus chose to explicitly show the rules

through the interaction between several instruments, with-of the game being played, or to impose a minimum limita-

out the intervention of neither composer nor performer (evention that would confine the range of possible happenstances

when a performer is involved, it is not as the manipulator

within the frame of cognition.

of the instrument, but rather as another instrument). But

is

that

betweenthe

instrument

andperformance.

contrary to these endeavors, we can ask what kind of problem
Perhaps it may sound far-fetched, but this attitude of Fluxus resembles the procedures taken by the “Supports/Surfaces”
group of artists in France, who reduced painting to the relationship between the “support” and the “surface.” What makes
painting a painting, they claimed, was neither the material
used (such as paint or canvas) nor the motifs or techniquesof how and what to paint. The condition of painting is instead solely grounded on the relationship between the support and the surface. “Surface” here addresses a field witha certain volume and an equally distributed density uponwhich the painter can paint, inscribe, distain, damage, or
project. “Support” is the infrastructure that establishes
such surfaces. As long as this relationship is maintained,

may be dealt if one were to persistently hold on to the actof composition that cannot be incorporated or reduced to theact of performance. Then one finds an ‘opening,’ so to speak,for modifying or expanding causal relationships on the levelof “instructions” that cannot be reduced to the physicalspecificity of any medium. The battle over initiatives andconcessions that emerges from such openings is what characterizes the actualities of the production process when
the level of “composition” is added (or preserved). Theseissues pertinent to the coupling between scores and theirperformances do not belong to a particular genre, but rather
foregrounds a general problem of hierarchical relationships
within a society.

anything could become painting. The main issue was not in any
positive features that made a thing appear as painting. It

In the works of Fluxus, the assigned, arbitrary content

was rather in the negative postulate of not possessing any

never actually undermined the relational equation regulating

functionality when compared to other artifacts it otherwise

the instruction and its execution. In other words, the rules

resembles, that made something a painting. The creation ofregulating the rules given to the performer were never ques-

such peculiar objects was the program set by the Support/tioned. The expansion of materials did not invite in a state

Surface group (to be clear, the specificity they aimed forof exception where established principles collapsed; it only

was not something that is “neither painting nor sculpture”

demonstrated that certain principles contained more flexible

as Donald Judd envisioned, but rather the extraction of id-

multiplicity, which in return served to fortify it (“youiosyncracies contained as potentials within the very produc-

cannot deal with X using your form, but if you use mine, yoution process of painting).

can articulate widely different materials and modify them inan equal manner”—the range of available materials justifies

The support that enables the surface—the score that enables
the performance. But compared to the physical connection between a support and a surface, the temporal difference (issue of precedence) between a score and a performance entails
13 0

the universality of a given form). Moreover, the discrepancies between the instruction and its execution were almost
never considered within the text of instruction (even though
the notion of ‘noise’ was understood as addressing such
1 31

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | B: Words

THE AUTHORITY OF COMPOSITION AND ITS OUTSIDE | SHinichi Takashima

discrepancy rather than any concrete feature of sound). In

create something that has not yet taken place. The validity

other words, the view that the instruction-execution (score-of a “description” is generally measured by its correspon-

performance) relationship is institutional and arbitrary,dence with events. “Instructions,” on the other hand, areand therefore a hierarchy that can be restructured, is ab-

defined by their incompleteness, the absence of any corre-

sent here. And this is precisely the problem that Ellen C.

spondence with events (realization). Then what validates an

Covito deals with.

instruction? (This question is actually homologous to theone posed by Clement Greenberg concerning “pure” which asked

For instance, Improvised Composition M takes as its principal material the very relationship between the composer
and the performer. During the performance, the same numberof composers as there are performers (in the Tokyo concert
which the author attended, there were three of each) compose
in real time, handing fragments of the written score to one
or more performers who plays them as they come. The orderin which a composer presents the score is not determined inwhether there was any characteristic immanent to a work thatdefines it as an art piece). Ultimately speaking, there isnothing that validates it. The validity of a instruction ismerely shown by a collateral: an authoritative figure behindthe presented text. The question thus becomes, “who gave out
this instruction?”—to which the act of composition answers
by composing this assumed authority. Thus, the act of composition ultimately attempts to compose the composer.

advance, and the performed music thus changes according towhat becomes composed when. Consequently, the composer who

Once this authority is successfully composed, the speculation

writes the most number of scores in the shortest amount ofin the name of ‘instruction’ can be validated, and it becomestime gets to be performed the most, precipitating a racing

possible to frame an absent event through the presence of

conflict between composers over time. Here, time is treatedthe composer figure. Under this validation, the instruction

as space, or more accurately, as a territory to be occupied

which pre-embraces events to come, assumes the seal of neu-or seized. Though the nature of the performance is comical,

trality (in relation to the said events). However, we should

the figure of the composer portrayed in this piece resembles

note that this established neutrality of the score actually

the true founder of civil society who Rousseau once criti-functions as an accomplice to the widely-shared fetish forcized as an impostor: “The first man who, having fenced in a

the singularity of performance and performed presence. In

piece of land, said ‘This is mine,” and found people naïve

particular, the genre of music has long enjoyed the notori-

enough to believe him...’” (Discourse on Inequality) Covito

ous collateral (pretext) of the “ephemerality of sound” tore-enacts a temporal version of this pre-contractual in-claim its singular relevance to the blind faith towards theequality (the genesis of ownership) that Rousseau portrayedabsolute irreducibility of the event taking place in thein order to claim the necessity of social contract. And shehere and now. But we do not need to cite Jacques Derrida todoes so by exploiting the textual form of “instruction,”see how such metaphysical ideology of presence does not in

which necessarily accompanies contractual relationships.

any way contradict the neutrality of the authoritative text
(the singularity of ‘speculation’) which frames the event in

The act of composition is related to the issue of how anadvance—it merely complements it.

authority emerges. For instance, how does one distinguishbetween a description and an instruction? Whereas “descrip-

There is, however, another route of mediation that sustains

tion” addresses something that has already happened, “in-the coupling between instructions and executions, due to thestruction” is a speculation into the future that attempts tofact that the score must be read in order to be executed.

13 2

1 33

THE AUTHORITY OF COMPOSITION AND ITS OUTSIDE | SHinichi Takashima

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | B: Words

introduces theShinichi Takashima has been creating performance and vid-material particularities of each reader’s bodies,underlies

eo works since 2003. He is interested in the feeling of

the conceptual universality of the composed authority. The

floating (sensation of zero-gravity) which can be gained

introduction and proliferation of these disparate bodies canby treating his own body both as material and function.

The

processofreading,which

inevitably

neither be contained nor controlled by the composed authority of the composer, or the authority of composition. This
is why composers such as Stravinsky had to maintain that theultimate truth of music lay in the score itself, and that theparticular performances were a necessary evil that had to

Major solo exhibitions include “One foot on the moon”(05), “These fallish things” (08) (Gallery Objective Correlative, Tokyo); major group exhibitions include “Bodyas Interimage” (Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media,
2009), “Weather and Lifetime: Installation of a Crick,Transportation by Paralysis” (Asahi Art Square, Tokyo,

be resorted to in the absence of more sophisticated method-2010), & “14 Evenings” (The National Museum of Modern

ologies. We know that these methodologies were dreamed into

Art, Tokyo, 2012).

the emerging media technologies of the gramophone record,
for instance, that seemed to realize a performance which bypassed the incomplete human performer, and we also know how
these dreams failed.

Covito’s“Composed

Improvisation”

seriesexposesandisgrounded on the simple fact that the individual phase of‘reading’ an instruction cannot, in principle, be reduced
to the instruction itself. In comparison, the “ImprovisedComposition” series foregrounds the individual phases of‘writing’ (or ‘enunciating’) an instruction as a conflict
betweencomposers

over

territories

oftime. Here again,

what is denounced is the complicit relationship between thecomposed authority of the instruction and the ideology ofpresence enwrapping its execution (performance). In other words, beneath a seemingly established “contract”—which
serves as the conceptual link between the authority of thecomposer, the neutrality of the score, and the singularityof the performance—lies the acts of ‘writing’ and ‘reading’
the contract. The inequality inherent in these physical actsthat must precede and follow the contract pertains strictly
to the domain of performance, for the contract by definition
cannot account for it. It is this inequality that serves asan ‘opening’ for Covito to reconfigure pre-established contracts and pre-composed causalities.

13 4

Gelsey Bell, Corinne Cappelletti, Diana Crum, Lindsey Drury, Kaia
Gilge & LJ Leach performing Improvised Composition F (Brooklyn.
2012)

1 35

COVITO’S PERFORMER PEDAGOGY | LINDSEY DRURY

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | B: Words

The purpose of this essay is simply to consider Ellen C.
Covito’s work not from the idea of what it does for its audiences, but instead from what it does for its performers. I
write it because I understand what work does in the world as
equally relevant to both groups. The basic idea I posit hereis that Covito’s works are a form of pedagogy for performers. Her works begin with the assumption that a performer
is already a skilled technician, and as a result do not seemto employ pedagogy as method that teaches artists skills.
Instead, her works address training itself as problematicby challenging the access of the performer to skills they

Covito’s
Performer
Pedagogy

have learned.
A true analysis of performers, however, is beyond thescope of this short essay. This is in part due to the factthat the work of performers is, in itself, too far-reachingin its subjectivity. The basis for the existence of performers takes for granted the idea that mastery is a point
reached when certain people are more worth watching thanothers because they have trained to be so. This pedagogicalidea of mastery extends beyond measurable skill, becoming
instead an issue of captivation. Performer education assumes
this ability to “captivate” is a nuanced matrix of powers
obtainable through knowledge of techniques, instincts, experience, and sometimes (and hopefully) further augmented byapparent “natural” access, variously attributed to beauty,

Lindsey Drury

originality, charisma, etc. It is therefore the situationof the performer to not be able to conceive of the value of
their ability, but simply to attend to its continued progress by any means considered possibly useful. These means
usually take the shape of an activity called practice. Performers work toward naturalizing the various techniques of
their trade, transferring non-natural actions like reading
music and dancing ballet into intuitive availability. Suchperformers bring the act, for example, of reading music, as
close to the act of seeing itself as possible. And these are
the kinds of performers most interesting in Covito’s works,
precisely because they have habituated the abilities that
Covito challenges by, for example, rendering the ability tosight-read subject to the quality of one’s vision.

136

1 37

COVITO’S PERFORMER PEDAGOGY | LINDSEY DRURY

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | B: Words

Covito’s work intentionally confounds traditional con-tion M, for example, the conditions of the score determine

ceptions of skill by turning to the most basic technologies

the conditions of how the performers stand and move in theof the performing human body. The physical “givens” of thespace, which determines the conditions under which the score

performer’s bodies are just as relevant to the work as given

is folded, which determines the conditions under which thetrained abilities. In the simplest example, eyesight is as

performers read the score, which determines the conditions

important as the ability to sight-read in the eye-chartof their playing of the instruments. In this domino effectscore (Composed Improvisation E).

In this kind of work,of conditions, the composer has bracketed out the pathos

what the performer cannot do, as determined by the physicalof performative intent, opting instead for physical condi-

properties of their bodies, is as relevant to the production

tions. But for the performer, whose only way to relate toof the performance as is skill. In Composed Improvisation E,

everything-as-conditions is to “do the best I can,” the ex-instruments drop out as various performers cease to be able

perience is marked deeply by a kind of pathos of proverbiallyto read the eye chart. The sound of the work is determined by“captaining a sinking ship.” In this case, mastery is not

the way in which the training of the performers is subjecteda means toward transcendence, but instead a means by whichto the properties of their eyesight.

physical compromise is navigated. And in this way, Covito’s

The perspective of performers typically isolates condi-

work unhinges what is and has always been the greatest burden

tions from actions. This perspective assumes that becauseof the performer: That of being worth watching. What is seen

the condition of the body is always compromised, the actionin Covito’s work is not the worthiness of the performer butof performance must be one of transcendence.

Covito’s work

conscious contention with physical conditions in which both

ignores this basic formula, opting instead for the idea thatthe consciousness and the conditions are equally powerful.

all abilities (and therefore possible actions) are condi-

I have long thought that the master improviser should

tions for a performance work. The performance of Covito’s

understand all works as flops, and must therefore consider

work is a byproduct of the interaction between all the con-every work as one that must be saved, not through the un-ditions present, and the performers are but a part of thatdoing of the flop, but through the intelligent navigation

total, interactive system. In this case, technique is butof malfunction (in which the assumption is that malfunc-

one of many “technics.” As a condition of performer bodies,tion is always a driving creative force in the state of

it is taken at face value in Covito’s work, and manipulated

improvisation). Covito’s works operate like a computer bug;through its physicality, regardless as to whether it be anthey crash the performer’s known methods for informationacquired capacity (playing an instrument, reading music,transference. And in this situation, the audience is left

dancing a jig) or one “inherent” to the body of the performer

to observe the breakdown of a system and the instant cop-(eyesight, height, etc). As such, technic also encapsulates

ing methods of the conscious performers within that system

the conditions of the objects put into use, which are also

as they seek to navigate the disabled vehicle of the piecemanipulated via their physicalities. Giant cloths inscribedtoward a safe landing.

with music notation are folded up into their most compact

In most cases of improvisational works, the basis forsizes, drumsticks are retrofitted with magnets so they at-

malfunction is simply that the performers don’t know exactly

tach to the metal objects played, pages of a score are glued

what is supposed to be done. Yet, in the case of Covito, thetogether. In this way, conditions continually manifest as

malfunction is more likely a form of sabotage designed into

the interactions between the various components (both hu-

the work itself, and directed precisely at the most primi-

man and object) brought together within Covito’s work. In

tive of the performer’s technic. In many cases, the perform-

the case of the giant “floor score” of Composed Improvisa-

er him or herself unintentionally drives this sabotage. The

13 8

1 39

COVITO’S PERFORMER PEDAGOGY | LINDSEY DRURY

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | B: Words

score is precise and determinate, for example, in Composedof malfunction, or the sensation that the performance of the

Improvisation G, but as the pages of the score are glued to-work gets in the way of the performance of the work. Nevergether, it becomes compromised when the performer separates

able to complete the task without anomalies, or only saddled

the pages in order to read them.

with task-as-anomaly-producer, successful performers weath-To perceive composition, or “intelligent design,” oneer Covito’s work more than aptly perform it.

must perceive something that has the quality of reliability. And this perception of composition is as necessary to
performers within works as it is to the audiences who view

Lindsey Drury is a dance artist, body studies scholar,

from the outside. Covito’s works are designed to be clear,and curator from Brooklyn, New York. Recent collabora-

complete, and vastly unreliable. Her works are specificallytive projects with No Collective include curating anddesigned to be subject to various forces of de-composition often caused by their very performance. Facing this
scenario, performers turn to themselves as the only reliable compositional factor (by perceiving themselves as the

producing Ellen C. Covito’s Percussions/Repercussions at
The Woods Cooperative for their jointly-run performanceseries {The Room}, and the large-scale work Vesna’s Fall(2014-).

subject of their own limited control), thus following the
traditional mode of improvisation. Yet they find in themselves their own foil. In the case of Covito, to be a goodfollower of instructions is to set one’s own booby-trap.
The most common response of performers in such cases isto thus escalate their own reliability and seek to provide
the consistency that the composition itself abandons as itis being fulfilled. And there the construction of the work
emerges, between the decomposition of the conditions andthe steadfastness of the performers, who, in various statesof compromise, carry her works to their ends to the best of
their abilities.
In the simplest terms, what performers experience in
Covito’s work is that to be good at something is not goodenough. And so, the question becomes: What value is that
information to the performer? Through all her hindrancesand methods of handicapping, Covito exposes to the performer
the experience of being a component in a system designed to
expose its own operations through malfunction. As such, theperformer can experience him or herself as (1) a componentand (2) necessarily malfunctioning. Though I doubt Covito
would agree with this statement (she would not consider her
own works as “malfunctioning” at all—they are instead operating exactly as planned) I maintain that the pedagogicalexperience of performers in the work begins with the issue
140

1 41

THE WEATHER OF OUR BODIES | KAY FESTA

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | B: Words

Kay Festa

Having organized two concerts of your music now,

we have become quite acquainted with your Composed Improvisation and Improvised Composition series. But we don’t know
so much about what you did before these pieces and what led
you there. Could you talk a bit about your background and how
you arrived at the Composed Improvisation series? I heard
you studied environmental sciences in college…
Ellen C. Covito

Yes, and having studied environmental sci-

ences was what brought me back to music after a hiatus of

The Weathers of
Our Bodies:Interview with
Ellen C. Covito

several years. I was doing all these studies of climates,
formation of weathers and their effects and side-effects.
And I started to wonder why most music necessitates a weather-proof condition to be performed. I mean that’s why wehave concert halls—to isolate and shelter the production andconsumption of music from the weather. This also applies
when the music is played outdoors, because most of the time,
the weather is something that just happens outside the workand from which the performance of music may or may not beshielded. And, since the majority of music played outside
nowadays employ tons of electricity, with all the amplification and loudspeakers, God help them if the music is notproperly shielded! It seemed to me that music was trying
hard to ignore the fact that there was always a changing
weather in the world around itself. The environment is always a contingent factor, but one that could still bring

Kay Festa

catastrophic effects to music—just like to any other phenomena in society.
So I started making a work that did not aim to render theeffects of weather as neutral as possible, but on the contrary, inserted them into the very mechanism of the music. I
created a series of composed modules that corresponded eachto a certain weather condition, that could be arranged together to form a performance based on the particular weather
of a given day, time and location. I called the whole series,
Musica del Tiempo. In Spanish ‘Tiempo’ means both ‘weather’and ‘time,’ and the modules were devised so that the temporal progression of the music would mostly be determined by

142

1 43

THE WEATHER OF OUR BODIES | KAY FESTA

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | B: Words

the exposure of the score or instruments to the weather. In

EC

Lluvia (Rain), for instance, the number of raindrops thatacquainted with several groups of people who were feminist

After doing my weather music for some years, I became

could be heard determined the number of notes that could be

activists. Influenced by them, I started reading several

played from the score, or in Viento (Wind), the turnover oftheoretical texts on feminism, or of feminism. Particularly,

the score pages were controlled by the wind. I had separate

I became fascinated by the writings of Donna Haraway andinstructions on how to mix the modules together which was

Marilyn Strathern. By reading their texts, I began to see

based on the forecast probability. These defined the mixture

that the “environment” or “weather” I had been dealing within terms of percentages, like ‘80% Sunny and 20% Rain.’in my works, could be, and should be, extended from the exterior conditions surrounding me to the interior of my body.

KF

What kind of scores were you using?

My “body” is also an “environment” and had its own “weath-EC

I collected various scores of music that had a certain

as a neutral body. Now as you also probably know, John Cage

weather-related word in its title, and used them one afterwith his graphic scores, had criticized the conventional

the other. I ended up with quite a variety of music, frombelief that musical notation of any kind is determinate.

Listz’s Chasse-neige, to Windy by The Association, and so

There is no such thing as a neutral notation or a determi-

on. The choice of music added a kind of a meta-caption tonate score. You Nakai explained this very clearly in thaters.” And as long as that is the case, there is no such thing

the piece, which often times was odd and funny, since you

1

might be performing Sunny by Bobby Hebb in the midst of a“Onrainstorm.
KF
EC

So is that where your idea of “found-score” comes from?

Nakai

text he wrote on my music. (1) The seeming determinacy is

Access-actually the result of an institutional codification aboutYou

ing: The Music of Ellen

how the score should relate to the sound. In other words,

C.

what is determinate or indeterminate is never the object,

Covito,”includedin
book

but always its usage. This was an important criticism. But(p. 127-131)

I was always curious why Cage never went on to extend thatthis

I started using that term later, when I began the Com-

criticism against the “bodies” of the performers who neces-

posed Improvisation series, but yes, it was already in prac-sarily come in contact with the score. Somehow Cage and alltice in Musica del Tiempo.

the composers after him criticized the seeming neutrality or
the singularity of the score, but retained the neutrality ofKF

Why did you decide to use found-scores?

the body. This always puzzled me, but one day I started tothink if that had anything to do with the fact that most ofEC

I decided to use scores that were already written bythese composers were men.

other people, since my focus was not so much in the scoresthemselves, but in how they are altered through their expo-

KF

sure to the weather. Also, like I said, the discrepancy orwhole discussion about marked and unmarked gender...

That is interesting. So I assume that would relate to thegap between the given music and the given weather in which
it was performed added an interesting layer of linguisticEC

commentary that I appreciated.

gender discussion that you say has to do with a certain

Yes, well it was a thought. Perhaps the marked-unmarked

tendency for females to be more susceptible to the weathers
KF

How did you move from Musica del Tiempo to the Composed

Improvisation series?

of her body... though that is also a generalization that
doesn’t really go so far. But in any case, that was what occurred to me.

144

1 45

THE WEATHER OF OUR BODIES | KAY FESTA

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | B: Words

KF

KF

So you’re saying that the Cagean indeterminacy between

When we did your Composed Improvisation pieces, I was

the written note and the sound actually brackets out the in-struck by how much focus is placed on the issue of visibil-

determinacy of the performer’s body that is inserted between

ity/invisibility. Could you talk a bit about that particular

the score and the music?

focus on the eye, in regards to the situatedness of the bodythat you were just saying?

EC

Yes, because what connects the note with the sound is on

the one hand institutional codification, but on the other,EC

As with any indeterminacy, the indeterminacy between thethe performer’s bodies. Cage revealed the first layer ofscore and the body explored in the Composed Improvisationindeterminacy, but preserved the second one. His graphic

pieces problematizes the issue of pre-established hierarchi-

scores never really questioned the physiological and techni-

cal control. And I think the visibility of the score, both

cal particularities of each body that accesses them. But ob-

for performers who read them, as well as for the audience

viously, there is a vast domain of indeterminacy there that

who sees the performers reading them, has functioned as thecannot be generalized so easily. So that’s where I decided

primary channel for this hierarchy in Western music. I mean,

to delve into with my Composed Improvisation series.

the whole training of solfege that you do as a child is tomake sure you listen to what you see, or what you are able

KF

to see, and not vice versa. So that gives the sight a privi-

I see how that resonates with Haraway’s theory of “Situ-

leged status in my works as well. But of course the visualated Knowledge.”channel cannot be isolated; seeing is crucial only becauseEC

it affects other capacities of the body. You see in order toYes, Haraway speaks of knowledge, as well as body, as

being always situated within a particular condition. (2) And
music always requires some kind of body, or more accurately,an assembly of bodies, including that of instruments as wellas listeners. But I also think that my readings of these2 Donna Haraway, “Situatedlisten, you see in order to play an instrument. And I believe

Knowl-

some pieces in the Composed Improvisation series focus on

The

these couplings of visibility with other physical activities

edges:

S c i e n c e
Questioninthat necessarily employ other body parts. So the emphasis on

texts made me aware that these particularities of the “envi-

Feminism andvisibility is only a starting point from which indeterminacyronment” or the “body” is not a simple given, but is always

thespreads out to permeate other modes of perceiving and doing.

a construction. That’s the difference between “weather” and“body” in my opinion (at least in the current state of technology, though I have heard that Russian army drops bags ofPrivi-

lege of Partial

Per-

spective.”
Feminist
Studies

concrete onto clouds to prevent rain). So it is one thingno.

to expose the system to those particularities, but quite

1988)

3

14,

KF

Is that also why you introduced dance in Improvised Com-

position F?

(Fall

EC

Yes, but you must know that when I wrote that piece, I

another to think of these particularities as absolutes anddidn’t intend it to be solely a dance piece. That is why

let them have the final word, so to speak. I felt that was

the instructions say that it could be done as a theatre, orwhere I could not agree with many of my activist friends. The

music, or any other kind of performance art. The difference

particularities needed to be exposed, but also needed to be

between Improvised Composition M and F is not rooted in theinspected and be opened for other possible configurations.

difference between genres. I am not interested in genre di-

There is no absolute neutrality of the body, but neither isvisions, nor do I believe that there is a fundamental dif-

there any absolute particularities that the body is confined

ference that one can pin-point between established genres.

to. But there is a tendency with male composers to lean towards

I think it is primarily a matter of established history andthe former and feminist activists to lean towards the latter.

discourse around it, and if works of art have anything to

146

1 47

THE WEATHER OF OUR BODIES | KAY FESTA

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | B: Words

say about that, it should be aimed to disintegrate thoseways to explore indeterminacy there, but they require taking

establishments, not to reinforce given boundaries by blindly

quite a different route than when you deal with channels ofreaffirming them. The difference that interested me more wascontrol based on writing.

the difference between modes of conveying instructions, ofestablishing hierarchical control. I thought one way of do-

KF

ing that was by writing and the other by speaking. Now there

you differentiated the two Improvised Compositions in terms

In relation to what you just said, could you explain why

are tendencies in music to employ the former, and in danceof gender? Do you think gender difference is more fixed thanto employ the latter, but obviously there are countless ex-

genre difference?

amples where that is not the case. Also, in many cases, bothof these modes are employed throughout the production of aEC

Oh yes. But I don’t think so in terms of physical dif-

work, and they can be distributed among different people—

ference. I think the difference of gender is primarily athe composer and the conductor, the choreographer and theconceptual and discursive difference. Therefore it is con-rehearsal director, and so on. But I decided to emphasize

stituted, rather than being a given. And in that sense, it

the distinction so that I could explore the indeterminacies

is an established difference, so there is only a difference

concealed in each mode separately.

in degree with the issue of genre divisions that I just mentioned. But the effects of gender difference do dominate andKF

But still, it seems that generally dance would connect

structure our lives on a deeper level, as well as across manyeasier to the entirety of the situated body than most music?

regions and layers. I have a feeling that that is because
this difference is ultimately grounded in the biologicalEC

Well that could be the case, but you also have to re-fact that only women can bear a child and reproduce. I know

member that there is no such thing as dance in general, asthat a lot of this biological premise is changing quickly

there is no such thing as the entirety of the body. Everyand I hope to see how our notions of gender difference will

generalization and totalization depends on efforts to make a

be radically altered when the technological conditions allow

particular, provincial channel of control absolute. The only

men to have babies as well. The other thing I was thinking

thing that exists are tendencies, and these tendencies, likewhen I related the two modes of conveying instructions to

I said, belong to establishments. If you take them too seri-

the two genders, was Marilyn Strathern’s discussion in The

ously, you’ll end up transfixed. You become paralyzed by the3

Marilyn

Gender of the Gift. (3) In this book she analyzes the struc-weather. Having said that, I do admit that I am interested

Strathern,ture of many customs in Melanesia where gender difference

in a particular tendency of dance in comparison to music,
because it seems to me that dance has always struggled andfailed to establish an authoritative format for conveying

The

Genderof the Gift:

plays a crucial role. But she maintains the perspective,

Problems

derived directly from her ethnography, that the distinction

with

Women

and Problems

of gender is not a predetermined, absolute regulation based

and documenting movement. Although I have traced the his-with Society

upon bodily differences, but something that is constructed

tory of dance notation, there is nothing that has attainedin

Melane-sia.

Berke-

within particular ‘transactions” between people. Therefore,

ley:

Uni-

she claims that not only biological females have feminineofidentities. This resonated well with the ideas that I had

the level of staff notation, and except for a few attempts,
video recording of dance has obviously not enjoyed the immense success of sound recording in music. So it seems thatversity

California
Press, 1988.

about determinacy and indeterminacy not being a function

for the major part, the authority of dance is rooted in theof the object, but of how the object is used; never in thebody, and direct contact of one body and another whether thatessence of the body but always in the relations or transac-

entails speech or demonstration of movement. There are manytions between bodies. I think that is also what the idea of

148

1 49

THE WEATHER OF OUR BODIES | KAY FESTA

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | B: Words“situated knowledge” implies, that bodies are always situ-

my endeavors are parasitic, but I put that forward and I

ated in relationships.

exploit that condition as the essential factor in my strategy. And moreover, this strategy is aimed at exploring and

KF

But there is also the problem of relationships being rei-fied, as if they were bodies.

revealing aspects of power that have been concealed by thesame platform that other composers build their works upon.
So you could say that it takes one parasite to expose theEC

That is precisely why it is important to remember thatworkings of another.

bodies are situated, but not completely reduced to situations. Like I said, neither an absolute neutrality nor ab-

KF

solute particularity...

the word “blindly.” It seems to reconnect to the issue of

I’m quite interested in that metaphor that you just used:visibility and invisibility that we were talking earlier on.
KF

I want to ask you a very straightforward question: do you

It is as if you are saying that the blindness of composers

think of yourself as a composer?

is constituted in not seeing that people see differently.

EC

EC

That’s a nice way to put it, Kay.

KF

But do you think that there is anything that you or yourUmm, are you asking me if I think of myself as a com-poser?
KF

Yes.

works are blind to?

EC

Well, honestly I don’t think about what I am except inEC

Absolutely. And I know very well that our friend You Na-

occasions where I am asked to provide a biography or to de-

kai has been mildly pointing at several things that he thinks

scribe myself to other people. It is always the others who

I have left out of sight. (laughter) I am very grateful forneed to identify you as something. So a straightforward an-that. But at the same time, blindness is not something you

swer to your straightforward question would be: of course

can get rid of. I mean, even in physiological sense, thenot, because composers are only composers in relation toability to see something is conditioned by blindness. You

other people. But let me also put it differently. Because I

see something because you are blind to something else. In

think what was implied in your question was the fact that

other words, seeing is always situated and therefore local-

the role I play in my works differs greatly from what com-

ized. So the issue is always on selecting what to see and toposers are usually expected to do. I don’t write scores, I

what ends, rather than trying to see everything.

give instructions, and I use other people’s works in theform of “found scores.” In the past, people have criticizedme for being a “parasite.” But for me, any kind of work
must be built on the platform provided by other people.

Kay Festa is a composer, poet, and an independent scholar who
makes music and performance, and writes about them as part of No

The whole notion of scores being determinate, for example,

Collective. Her most recent wrirings include: “More than Meets

was not established by a single composer overnight. So you

the Ears: An Account on the Shared (Ac)counts of John Cage andcould say that all the works that depend on that particular

Igor Stravinsky” (TDR, Summer 2015, 59-2: 92–102)

determinacy are necessarily parasitic to all the works that
prepared that condition. The difference between their attitude and mine is this: I not only acknowledge the fact that
15 0

8Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | APPENDIX: CONCERT PARAPHERNALIA:XIDNEPPA
trecnoC
ailanrehparaP

15 2

APPENDIX:
ConcertParaphernalia

1 53

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | APPENDIX: CONCERT PARAPHERNALIA

THE MUSIC OF ELLEN C. COVITO | NEW YORK, 2012

Panoply Performance Laboratory
PPL is two artists (Esther Neff and Brian McCorkle), a
flexible collective, and a space. PPL’s work is staging
social gathering, organizing performance situations as
performance, and making of performances. Institutional
engagements have involved LMCC’s Swing Space, Performance Project at University Settlement, Performance Lab
at LaGuardia Community College, and performed researchat the Anarchist Book Fair, FIGMENT, SPARK, University of Kentucky, Ohio State, High Concept Laboratories(Chicago), and elsewhere. PPL has also held residencies
in public spaces through chashama, constructed situational, durational actions at Grüntaler9 (Berlin), Fitness Center for Arts and Tactics, Glasshouse Projects,
and Grace Exhibition Space (NYC), made social projects
with IV Soldiers, The Compendium, and others, performed

The Music of Ellen C. Covito

at English Kills, Dixon Place, CultureFix, the cell,
BOB The Pavilion at Columbia University, AUNTS, Casita
Maria, Bronx Arts Space, ABC No Rio, ISSUE Project Room
(Movement Research Spring Festival), and Momenta Art
in NYC, Defibrillator (Chicago), Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit, LA GALERIA at Villa Victoria (Boston), The Lemp (St. Louis), 119 Gallery (Lowell, MA),Charlotte Street’s La Esquina Gallery (Kansas City),

May 24, 2012
Vaudeville Park, Brooklyn, New York
co-curated with
Panoply Performance Laboratory

ACUD, KuLe Theater, and BLO Atelier in Berlin and at
the Pumpehust during Hitparaden in

Copenhagen, and asa band with Valerie Kuehne across the US, Montreal, andGermany. PPL the project space is in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and is a small garage. The two lead artists live
there and host weekly interdisciplinary performance
practices and projects from around the world. Throughthis space, and in conflux with performance practices,
PPL co-organizes projects like Brooklyn International
Performance Art Festival (BIPAF), performance conferences-as-performances like MODE METHOD MEDIUM and Operations and Participations, and the ongoing PERFORMANCYFORUM. www.panoplylab.org

15 4

1 55

156
10. Composed Improvisation M (2010)

Maria Stankova, Masami Tomihisa, Sean Ali, Travis Just, You Nakai

Same as 5a5c. Improvised Composition F (2011)

Instrumentalist: Gelsey Bell, Masami Tomihisa, Sean Ali, Travis Just

Akiva Zamcheck, Aliza Simons, Brian McCorkle, Catherine Provenzano, Gelsey Bell, Ivan Naranjo,

5b. Improvised Composition M (2011)

Found Score: Ne Me Quitte Pas (If You Go Away) - Jacques Brel/Nina Simone
Composer: Aliza Simons, Brian McCorkle, Ivan Naranjo, Maria Stankova

Choreographer/Dancer: Lindsey Drury, Corinne Cappelletti, Diana Crum, Kaia Gilge, LJ Leach

Performer: Brian McCorkle

Composer: Akiva Zamcheck

Maria Stankova, Masami Tomihisa, Sean Ali, Travis Just, You Nakai
5a. Improvised Composition F (2011)

9. Composed Improvisation S (2012)
Akiva Zamcheck, Aliza Simons, Brian McCorkle, Catherine Provenzano, Gelsey Bell, Ivan Naranjo,

Brian McCorkle, Gelsey Bell, Maria Stankova, Masami Tomihisa,

Masami Tomihisa, Catherine Provenzano
4. Composed Improvisation T (2011)

8. Composed Improvisation L (2010)
Found Score: Swing Low, Sweet Chariot - Wallace Willis

Found Score: Prélude de La Porte Héroïque du Ciel - Erik Satie

Maria Stankova, Masami Tomihisa, Travis Just

Found Score: Sebben, crudele - Antonio Cladara
3. Composed Improvisation B (2012)

7. Composed Improvisation G (2009)

2. Composed Improvisation J (2009)

Maria Stankova, Masami Tomihisa, Sean Ali, Travis Just, You Nakai

Maria Stankova, Masami Tomihisa, Sean Ali, Travis Just, You Nakai

Composer: Esther Neff, Performer: Brian McCorkle

6. Composed Improvisation E (right eye) (2010)
Akiva Zamcheck, Aliza Simons, Brian McCorkle, Catherine Provenzano, Gelsey Bell, Ivan Naranjo,

Found Score: Mikrokosmos ("Six Unison Melodies") - Béla Bartók

Intermission

Akiva Zamcheck, Aliza Simons, Brian McCorkle, Catherine Provenzano, Gelsey Bell, Ivan Naranjo,

1. Composed Improvisation E (left eye) (2010)

ProgramVaudeville Park, May 24, 2012, 8pm

The Music of Ellen C. Covito

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | APPENDIX: CONCERT PARAPHERNALIA
THE MUSIC OF ELLEN C. COVITO | NEW YORK, 2012

^ Flyer for The Music of Ellen C. Covito concert> Program of the same concert

1 57

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | APPENDIX: CONCERT PARAPHERNALIA

ELLEN C. COVITO NO ONGAKU | TOKYO, 2012

Ellen C. Covito no Ongaku
September 19, 2012
Koen-dori Classics, Tokyo
co-curated with
Ensemble for Experimental Music and Theater
Ensemble for Experimental Music and Theater
Formed by participants of Tomomi Adachi’s workshop at
the Yotsuya Art Studium in 2011, EEMT focuses on theinquiry into the nature of theatre and notation as initiated by John Cage, and engages in an examination andre-construction of works that pertain most often to thegenealogy of Conceptualism and Minimalism. Their repertoire spans from the works of Fluxus, Scratch Orchestra,
early Minimal Music, to more recent endeavors by PostWandelweiser composers. The group assembles members ofdiverse backgrounds, including music, performance art,
visual art, and poetry.

15 8

1 59

東京山手教会 B1F

東京都渋谷区宇田川町 19-5

公園通りクラシックス

Improvised Composition のためのダイアグラム

Ellen C. Covito の音楽

No Collective と実験音楽とシアターのためのアンサンブル合同企画：

2012 年 9 月 19 日

ELLEN C. COVITO NO ONGAKU | TOKYO, 2012

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | APPENDIX: CONCERT PARAPHERNALIA^ Flyer for Ellen C. Covito no Ongaku concert> Program of the same concert
160

161

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather | APPENDIX: CONCERT PARAPHERNALIAPERCUSSIONS-REPERCUSSIONS | NEW YORK, 2014

Ellen C. Covito
Percussions-Repercussions
Dreary Somebody
Dreary Somebody is totally temporal, totally permeable,
and constantly in flux. It rearranges itself aroundeach new project,

redefining itself and its mission

in relation to the work at hand. At the moment, Dreary
Somebody is the creative entity by which Lindsey Drury
has orchestrated a number of dance works. These projects (2012-2014) include the collaborative opera Any

April 12, 2014
The Woods Cooperative, Queens, New York,
co-curated with
Dreary Somebody(part of the on-going performance series{The Room})

Size Mirror is a Dictator with Panoply Lab and thelarge-scale work Vesna’s Fall created with No Collective. Previous works include Run Little Girl (2012),
in which the progression, intention and interaction of
the eight performers and 20 dance modules were choreographed live, and I am My Shitty Little Box (2011), asolo performed both for and as one audience member by
first exchanging clothing with them. Curatorial project
include Post-Dance for the Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival (2013).

162

163

164

April 12, 2014, 8pm, The Woods Cooperative, Ridgewood, New Yorkby Luis Tabuenca and Devika Wickremesinghe

Ellen C. Covito: Percussions/Repercussions[The (First) Room] presented by No Collective and Dreary Somebody

10. Composed Improvisation I (2014)

9. Composed Improvisation D (2013)

8. Composed Improvisation A (2014)

7. Percussion/Repercussion D (2013)

6. Composed Improvisation V (2013)

5. Composed Improvisation I (2014)

3-4. Percussion/Repercussion B (2014)
simultaneously with
Percussion/Repercussion C (2014)

2. Composed Improvisation D (2013)

1. Percussion/Repercussion A (2014)
written in collaboration with Cody Eikman

ProgramEllen C. Covito: Works After Weather | APPENDIX: CONCERT PARAPHERNALIAPERCUSSIONS-REPERCUSSIONS | NEW YORK, 2014

^ Flyer of Ellen C. Covito: Percussions/Repercussions concert> Program of the same concert

165

Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather

No Collective (Jay Barnacle, Ai Chinen, Kay Festa,
Earle Lipski, You Nakai, et al.) makes various works
thatexamineand(re)constructdifferent

modes

of

temporalities. Most often, these have resulted in music performances which explore and problematize boththe conceptual and material infrastructures of music
and performance. Other formats of work include playscripts, picture books, haunted houses, and performance art. Since its inception circa 2007, members of
No Collective have varied both in quantity (from one
to fifty) and quality (from reluctant music novices
to professional instrumentalists) according to each
works’ objective and situational conditions. Recent
works include Vesna’s Fall, a decidedly modernist,large-scale dance piece made in collaboration with
Visit

Lindsey Drury (Judson Church, Black Mountain College,ellenccovito.com

2014), and Concertos No.4, performed with ball-shapedfor videos of performance, new works,

speakers operated by blind performers in a completely

and updated information.

darkened 16,000 square feet performance space (National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo, 2012); publications include Concertos (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2011),
a book which describes and prescribes the process of
preparation, performance, and documentation of a music concert in the form of a playscript, and Sonnet
for ‘Concertos No.4’ (National Museum of Modern Art
Tokyo, 2013), a score of a nursery rhyme whose lyrics are the entire instructions for making another(‘serious’) music concert. A brief portrayal of No
Collective’s activities can be found in “The Musicof Ellen C. Covito: An interview with You Nakai by
Elizabeth Hoffman,” published in Perspectives of New
Music (Winter, 2013).
http://nocollective.com

Tomoko Hojo creating the score of Improvised Composition M(Tokyo, 2012)

166

167

Gelsey Bell, Ivan Naranjo & Maria Stankova creating the scoreof Improvised Composition M (Brooklyn, 2012)