Deep Listening: The Strategic Practice of Female Experimental Composers post 1945 by Louise Catherine Antonia Marshall Volume II Interview transcripts Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) University of the Arts London London College of Communication May 2018 Contents Ellen Fullman p. 1 Elsinore, 17 May 2015 Éliane Radigue p. 79 Paris, 4 November 2015 Annea Lockwood p. 150 Leeds, 11 May 2016 Joan La Barbara p. 222 Amsterdam, 17 May 2016 Pauline Oliveros p. 307 London, 23 June 2016 Interview 1 Ellen Fullman Date 17 May 2015 Venue Kulturværftet, Elsinore, Denmark 1 ELLEN FULLMAN Keywords EF = Ellen Fullman KCAI = Kansas City Art Institute LSI = Long String Instrument TW = Theresa Wong Names mentioned Abramovíc, Marina, and Ulay Anderson, Laurie (artist, musician) (performance artists) Ashley, Robert (composer) Bielecki, Bob (Robert) (sound engineer, producer, academic) Buzzarté, Monique (musician) Cage, John (composer) Carr, Tim (curator, The Kitchen, Collins, Nicolas (musician, technician) New York) Deep Listening Band Dempster, Stuart (musician) Dresser, Mark (bass player) Dreyblatt, Arnold (composer) Dukes, Little Laura (entertainer) Feldman, Morton (composer) Ferguson, Ken (ceramicist, Film Video Arts, New York (EF professor, KCAI) installing editing suites) Franklin, C.O. (lawyer, maternal Fuller, Buckminster (architect, grandfather) inventor) Fullman, Peggy and Victor (EF’s Fullman, Robert (Bob, EF’s brother) parents) Gamper, David (musician) Gene Perlowin Associates, New York (EF works as electronics technician) Graney, Pat (choreographer) Hawkins, Screamin’ Jay (blues singer) Hay, Deborah (choreographer) Helms, Jesse (US conservative senator) Hoffman, Hans (artist, EF Ione (Carole Ione Lewis, poet, writer, influenced by his push and pull partner to Pauline Oliveros) theory) Jackson, Mahalia (gospel singer) Jong, Erica (author) King, B.B. (blues guitarist) Lewis, Stanley (painter, professor, KCAI) Lockwood, Annea (composer) Lucier, Alvin (composer) McLuhan, Marshall (media theorist) Mattson, Richard (artist, professor, KCAI) Meyers, Michael (performance McMaster-Carr, hardware sellers artist, professor, KCAI) (wires) Massie, Danièle (LSI player) Montano, Linda, and Tehching Hsieh, (performance artists) Niblock, Phill (artist, composer) Oliveros, Pauline (composer, writer, Deep Listening developer) 2 ELLEN FULLMAN Oliveros, Peter (Pauline’s Panhuysen, Paul (sound stepbrother) artist/composer) Partch, Harry (composer, instrument Reagan, Ronald (US president) builder) Riley, Terry (minimalist composer) Rolling Stones (blues rock band) Slawek, Anita (North Indian vocal Sprenger, Konrad (aka Jörg Hiller, coach, kyall tradition) musician) Uttal, Jai, and the Pagan Love Wong, Theresa (composer, cellist, Orchestra (band) EF’s partner) Wood, Grant DeVolson (artist) Young, La Monte (minimalist composer) Zuckermann Harpsichords International, Connecticut Places, venues and organisations mentioned Amsterdam Austin, Texas (Candy Factory studio) Bay Area, San Francisco (EF’s home) Berlin Brooklyn Catholic Club, Memphis, Tennessee Cleveland Art Institute (EF’s father Eindhoven, The Netherlands attends for one year) Exploratorium, the Museum of Franklin Park, C.O., Memphis Science, Art and Human Perception, San Francisco (EF’s residency) Kansas City Art Institute (EF attends, Memphis, Tennessee BFA sculpture, 1979) Minneapolis College of Art and Muldon, Mississippi Design New York New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting & Sculpture Pittsburgh (father) Seattle Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis Wattle & Daub Theater, Kansas (student project, KCAI) Compositions, books, festivals, exhibitions and publications mentioned Artforum (read as student) Body Music (CD, EF) Change of Direction (CD, EF) Departure (composition, EF) Click Festival, Elsinore, Denmark Duets on Ice (composition, Laurie (2015) Anderson) Epigraphs in the Time of AIDS Fear of Flying (novel, Jong) (Oliveros) Fluctuations (CD, EF and Monique Harbors (composition, EF and TW) Buzzarté) 3 ELLEN FULLMAN Long String Instrument (invention, The Long String Instrument (LP, EF) technical difficulties, material, tuning, unusual set-ups) The Lovers – The Great Wall Walk The Man Who Grew Common in (performance, Abramovíc and Ulay) Wisdom (music for dance by Hay, EF) Metal Skirt Sound Sculpture (sonic Music on a Long Thin Wire (Lucier) sculpture, EF) New Music America, Walker Arts Ort (CD, EF and Konrad Sprenger) Center, Minneapolis (1980) Sonic Meditations (Oliveros) Staggered Stasis (CD, EF) Streetwalker (performance, EF) Suspended Music (CD, EF with the Deep Listening Band) Terminal New York Show, Red TexasTravelTexture (composition, Hook, Brooklyn (1983) EF) Work for 4 Players and 90 Strings The Unlearning (CD, TW) (composition, EF) “Worksong” (song, EF with Konrad Sprenger) Social/art/political/miscellaneous Acoustical beating Accommodation (seeking, burglaries, cleaning, danger) AIDS Artist (EF thinking of self as an artist, feeling validated) Building and breaking (student Building/making (EF, Victor exercises, KCAI) Fullman) Building materials (LSI) Cello (EF’s research with Wong on harmonics) Ceramics (study, love of Japanese Coffee ceramics, accumulation) Civil rights (grandfather’s role) Civil war, US DAAD (German scholarship Deep Listening and Deep Listening programme) workshop Dignity as an artist, validity (Europe) Engineers and technicians (technical help) Experimenting, building LSI GI Bill (educational opportunities) Gliding tones Income (need to earn money, EF, and Jobs (kitchen; tape-machine father) maintenance; telephone systems; electronics technician) Journey (music/performance as) Legacy (students working with EF; notation system; using MIDI) 4 ELLEN FULLMAN Listening MIDI (use with LSI composition) Music (Delta blues, blues, electronic, Musical education Indian, experimental, vocals) Parents (mother: home-maker/office Process in art work; father: advertising) Race, mixed heritage and racism in Resonance (importance of) Deep South Resonator (on LSI, warming up, Scholarships and prizes (high school building resonator box) art scholarship; grants; DAAD) School, public high school, Saturday Sculpture (relationship with music) classes Tape recorder (reel-to-reel, musique Trance states concrète techniques, physicality of tape, Feldman’s Nagra unit) Tuning (just intonation; Bielecki; Vatican II Partch) Voice (tone, shamanistic states) Water-drip drum Weather (conditions inside Candy Factory; parents’ dislike of Pittsburgh) Wires (shimmer of strings; sourcing for LSI’s strings) 5 ELLEN FULLMAN File: Composer Ellen Fullman and researcher Louise Marshall Duration: 02:13:05 Date: 17 May 2015, morning Place: An office in the Kulturværftet, Elsinore, Denmark Also present: Theresa Wong Note: ellipses indicate pauses in the flow of speech. The only words that have been removed are some extraneous examples of phatic paralanguage – “you know”, “like”, “kind of/kinda” – and not the removal of substantive material. Some of these phrases have been retained to indicate a flow of conversation. 00:00:001 Louise Marshall: Ellen (and Theresa), I am going to ask you some questions, but, really, they are broad discursive questions, so please go in any direction you so please. There might be bits that I return to over the course of our hour or so together, so if it seems like I am repeating myself, please don’t think me rude – it’s just that I am trying to get things. Can you tell me first of all a bit about your early years, a bit about your family? How would you describe them? Ellen Fullman: Yes. So I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, and my father was from Pittsburgh, my mother, Memphis, so I have this actually mixed cultural heritage.2 My dad… was an artist. He was a very serious painter as a young man and, I think, a very interesting painter. His style was American regionalism, which is kinda, you know, Grant 1 This transcript has been seen and approved by Ellen Fullman. 2 Victor and Peggy Fullman. I ask Fullman for her parents’ first names much later in the interview. 6 ELLEN FULLMAN Wood style.3 And he went to art school at the Cleveland Art Institute for one year, but due to financial reasons and the [Second World] War picking up, he… Louise Marshall: Was he a soldier during the war? Ellen Fullman: He was drafted but he had a disability with one eye, so he wasn’t able to go into combat. And he stayed. He worked in the headquarters in Washington [DC]. Actually, what he did was create graphics that, when they planned battles, they had graphics that they moved around on a big board, you know, so he made things like that. Louise Marshall: Like a plotting board, they call them in the UK. Ellen Fullman: Yeah, yeah. Louise Marshall: After the war, did he practise as an artist in Memphis? Ellen Fullman: He did a bit. With the GI Bill, you could attend college after the war, but he was married, and my parents had my brother soon thereafter and it was just too much.4 He just stopped pursuing a degree. And then my parents didn’t like the weather in Pittsburgh and, you know, my dad said that he would never have to shovel sn–, rain, in Memphis so they went back to my mom’s family roots and got support that way and my dad went into advertising. He did a bit of painting after that, but I would say that the work wasn’t as serious, but I really 3 Grant DeVolson Wood (1891-1942). The regionalist style was a response to the 1930s’ economic depression. Wood’s American Gothic is a typical regionalist painting. 4 Fullman’s brother, Robert