COMMONS CHOIR | Robert Kocik prosody performance

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JUNIPER BERRIES

If we divided the

earth into pieces the

size of juniper berries the

number of pieces would not-be-as-great-as-the

number of times that each

being has been our mother

DARIUS SCORE FOR WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN_edited.jpg

THE

COMMONS CHOIR

is a variable, multi- modal/lingual/racial/national/generational cast of singers, actors, dancers, poets, protestors, musicians, composers, scholars, somatic and energy practitioners, psychotherapists and people. "We" are our content, working altogether. The choir could appear almost anywhere: in a hospital or school, at a performance venue, ceremony, rally, fundraiser or in the street. The scripts, scores and librettos might best be defined as investigative musicals, or perhaps just prayers and entreatments. The work is choral and choreographed, an interdependence of movement and prosody (the full potency of the speech sounds) known as choreoprosodia. Among the matters treated by the choir: unjustness, privatization, psychoneuroendocrinology, language origin, usury laws, the Age of Discovery, Chinese energetics, stress, schadenfreude/freudenschade, gratitude, humanity as one family, and of course the miraculous interbeing of all that does and doesn't exist.

no one knows what a word is no one knows what a word is no one knows

no one one knows knows what what a a word word is what a word is

no one one no no one one knows what what a word knows

knows what a word word a what knows knows what what knows what

no one word is what one knows what a one knows a word knows no one

no one one no no one one knows no one knows what no one knows

no one owns what a word is no one owns what a word is no one owns what no one knows

where would you be now?

thing god

gum gone

gawk dumb come

thing gum dom

thing-gamy

thing gong agog agony

TRADEOFF

jackhammer and paper bag …

take back for black Malabar pepper

for zipper and twist ties …

Sri Lankan cinnamon

disown credit card for Mekong camphor

AC, chemo-therapy, clothes pin …

for Burmese honey bees

take back Texan pecan and send Sumer its cumin

Taino sweet batata, Harappan turmeric, Paraguayan piña, Papuan banana —

replace what I gave you will all that I took

purge Maputo of Portuguese, Phnom Penh of KFC

oust Aztec tomatl from overseas salsa

omit atom bomb for whistled Canary Island speech

a joint stock company’s not worth one Nanticoke squash

ill-share and grow stark madde owning another’s need

to explore is to pleurer, to pay and be paid for dying out —

there’s nothing wrong with trade per se, but burning incense to self serve

a Martian crater named Magellan, can you believe it —

it’s not to trade that’s out of place, but lead in paint or

no pockets for the poor along assembly lines to pick

priceless peppercorn en route to pharaoh nostrils

I say circumnavigate, save nothing to gain

hand in hand with exchange, there once was … free polio vaccine

NOTES

1st video (above): performance of Brooklyn Rezound, BRIClab, 2016. Choreography and co-direction Daria Faïn; libretto and co-direction Robert Kocik; composer Darius Jones; lighting, Tuçe Yasak; vocalists Jean Carla Rodea, Julia Uleha, Anaïs Maviel, Yoon Sun Choi, Fay Victor; performers Martita Abril, Sylvestre Akakpo, Ilona Bito, Lydia Chrisman, Bob Holman, Shantelle C. Jackson, Judah Levenson, Anaïs Maviel, Shelley Nicole, Eli Tamondong, David Thomson, and Saul Ulerio. Brooklyn is colossus wherein we are each other. Because of the incessant influx of foreigners, August Levasseur, private secretary to General Lafayette during his 1824 farewell tour of the United States, wrote: “Of all the cities in the United Stated, Breukelen is certainly the one in which society has lost most of the national character." 18 languages (excluding West African and Lenape languages) were already spoken New Amsterdam in 1643. Today, over 700 languages are spoken by NYC residents. Brooklyn Rezound celebrates Kings County as the portal for our national character.

2nd Video: performance of E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E, New York LIve Arts, 2013. Choreography and co-direction Daria Faïn; libretto and co-direction Robert Kocik; composer Katherine Young, vocalists Samita Sinha and Julia Ulehla; performers Christina Andrea, LaTasha Nevada Diggs, Levi Gonzalez, Hazuki Homma, Peter Jacobs, Aram Jibilian, Dora Koimtzi, Athena Kokoronis, Mina Nishimura, Jaime Ortega, Peter Sciscioli, Kensaku Shinohara, Emily Skillings, Sam Sowyrda, Despina Stamos, Tatyana Tenenbaum, Larissa Velez-Jackson, Brandon Washington. E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E is an epic, town hall musical that calls upon a panoply of reparative tones, tunes, seed sounds, intentions, dead languages and political economy prayers to plead the case for a more compassionate economy, proposing, with Thomas Paine and Martin Luther King, money as everyone's. E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E asks: has English ever been the speech of a free people? Is it an inherently commercial, mercenary, discursive, duplicitous tongue, or is that just human nature? E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E sounds out the possibility that today’s economic, ecological and inequity crises are direct consequents of the sonic and connotative qualities of superpower English.

3rd video: Mayday Heyday Parfait, BRIC Arts Media, 2017. Choreography and co-direction Daria Faïn; libretto and co-direction Robert Kocik; composer and musical director Anaïs Maviel; composer Darius Jones; lighting, Tuçe Yasak; vocalists Yoon Sun Choi, Fay Victor, Jean Carla Rodea; performers Martita Abril, Massimiliano Balduzzi, Ilona Bito, Lydia Chrisman, Ichi Go, Alvaro Gonzales Dupuy, Antígona González, Michael Ingle, Aram Jibilian, Saúl Ulerio, Drew Devero, Cecilia Woolfolk, Laura Colomban, and the Improbable Choir. Mayday Heyday Parfait is about peopling since time immemorial, but particularly since Vasco da Gama and Columbus set sail in opposite directions in search of nutmeg, setting into motion the global interchange of peoples, crops, ideas, livestock and contagions under the most exploitative terms imaginable. Although the ongoing momentum of “discovery” is coterminous with our extinction, we still have not put into place a counteractive age of undiscovery. This is the plot.

4th video: Break Even Banking, Stoop Series, BRIC House, 2015. Choreography and co-direction Daria Faïn; libretto and co-direction Robert Kocik; composer Ben Barson; vocalist Gizelxanath and spirit child; performers and musicians Martita Abril, Sylvestre Akakpo, Miriam Atkin, Maximilian Balduzzi, Ben Barson, Ilona Bito, Anna Carapetyan, Jesse Chevan, Lydia Chrisman, Lacina Coulibaly, Alina Folini, Andrea Haenggi, Megan Harold, Hazuki Homma, Shantelle Jackson, Jaime Ortega, Thomas J F Regan III, Quincy Saul, Emily Skillings, Despina Stamos, David Thomson, Saúl Ulerio, Jonathan Wood Vincent. Break Even Banking is an incantation for the prohibition of high-risk speculative investment, proprietary trading and derivative innovations on the part of commercial banks, by reinstating the Glass-Steagell Act and enforcing the Volker Rule; with a closing cry that each person unconditionally deserves enough income for meeting basic needs just for needing them. Paul Volker himself has stated that the only useful banking innovation in our era has been the ATM machine.

BREAK EVEN BANKING

Break even banking bring back boring banking

Paul Volcker said since the time of Ho Chi Minh

no banking betterment but the ATM.

Break even banking bring back boring banking

be being paid

pease porridge hot

be being paid

pease porridge cold

be being paid

pease porridge in the pot

be being paid

nine days old

be being paid

for rotting away

be reimbursed

be being paid

pease porridge hot

be being paid

pease porridge cold

be being paid

pease porridge in the pot

be being paid

nine days old

be being paid

for rotting away

be reimbursed

The Commons Choir was begun by Daria Faïn and Robert Kocik in 2008 as the Phoneme Choir. Its purpose was to put into practice and perform the collaborative research and experimentation of the Prosodic Body, an experiential artscience initiated by Faïn and Kocik in 2006. In 2010, in order to apply the work more directly to social, systemic, civilizational and karmic suffering and wellbeing, the choir morphed into The Commons Choir.

The Choir has worked extensively for the past 15 years, performing, teaching, organizing events, appearing in diverse communities. Venues include the New Museum, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Movement Research, St.Mark's Poetry Project, Dixon Place, Danspace, the Harlem Stage, New York University, Aalto University Helsinki, Harvard University, San Francisco State University, BRIC Arts Media, Laboratorio Alameda Mexico City, Michigan State University, Rutgers University, Center for Performance Research, Poets House, New York Live Arts and EMPAC.

Support in the form of grants, awards and residencies has been received from Gibney DIP, Hip Up Foundation, New Music USA, New York State Cultural Council, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, New York State Cultural Affairs, Bri Arts Media, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, James E. Robinson Foundation, Movement Research AIR, Marseille Objective Danse, Foundation Cartier.

OXYTOCIN SONG

w ɔ ʒ m l m

e ɛ ɔ h------

w ɔ ʒ m l m

e ɛ ɔ h------

w ɔ ʒ m l m

e ɛ ɔ h------

w ɔ ʒ m l m

e ɛ ɔ h------

PEPTIDE (bubbles up)

ɤ ø ɧ ʜ k͜s i n̋ː:

ESTROGEN CHORUS

θ ð θ ð ŋ p ʊ ɛ ʊ

w j j j

θ ð θ ð ŋ p dʒ - -

w w j j

θ ð θ ð ɛ ʊ dʒ ŋ p

j - - -

dʒ θ θ ʊ ŋ p θ θ ʊ

w j w j w j wj wj wj wj wj wj wj wj..........

θð θð θð θð θð.........

BELLY BUTTON AMULET

(intoned by dancers and singers as the dancers spatialize the energy belt or girdle—the dai mai—encircling the waist)

nːːːːh́ɑ́ɑ́ɑ́ nːːːːh́ɑ́ɑ́ɑ́ nːːːːh́ɑ́ɑ́ɑ́

v d v d v d v d v d v d v d v d t‿ĺː

i‿ŋ̀ːːːːːːːːː i‿ŋ̀ːːːːːːːːː i‿ŋ̀ːːːːːːːː

u ɡ ʦ ʤ w hh b ɔ æ‿ɔ́ː́ː́ u ɡ ʦ ʤ w hh b ɔ æ‿ɔ́ː́ː́

ɑːːː‿iːːː‿íː́ː́ː́ɑ́‿ː́ː́ː́

We are the pie thrown in austerity's face, knowing full well that "now we shall have no pie."

Daria Fain MR 11-23-15-8515 credit DAVID GONSIER copy.jpg

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(statement made before the first Commons Choir performance)

To be happy for another’s well-being! We interpret 'commons' as that in which people secure the necessities of life — in a word, the economy — the overall oikos, all our households taken together. The antithesis of ‘commons’ is ‘enclosure.’ The choir’s primary purpose is to play a part in pulling the plug on the predominating enclosure movement, by displaying and offsetting its constitutive parts and historical continuity. Enclosure can be broadly translated as privatization — privatization of infrastructure and public services, horrifying wealth disparity and hoarding, debt-burdening, social insecurity, discrimination, mass-incarceration, home-foreclosures and the prohibitive costs of education and health care premiums, are all forms of enclosure fueling an ever more exclusive prosperity in which your well-being is a market externality, a strictly private matter. Deep down, austerity and enclosure are synonymous. Psychologically, shutting down, taking a side, justification, self-defensiveness, belligerence, fear and stress are enclosures. Individuation itself encloses. Fortunately, the ubiquity of the problem is its weakness! Money making money without making anything else, as though that were sustainable.

The Choir is choral, choreographed, investigative, entreative, epic, antidotal, polymathic, collective speech act. In any event, our most immediate meaning is who we each are and how far we’ve each come to call this work home, and the fact that we continue to perform the odds against us, a charity that begs to exist.