PROJECT

Oracle is an improvisation practice where body, voice, identity and participation meet: a public, emancipative and sharable act that involves individuality in a communal setting. The ‘prophecy’ of the Oracle can be read as the voices of individuals that open their interiority in a group, but also as a social-critical awareness, questioning the position of the human being in the social, political and ecological environment.

Rather than focusing on composition or singing from a musical practice Caroline Daish, Justine Maxelon and Michel Yang explore inner sensations coming from a body practice. The invisible becomes concrete not through sight but through sound. By practicing with eyes closed they access another form of self, heighten listening and investigate duality within and between themselves and the spectator. Their voices meet in (dis)harmony, while their physicality embodies the vocality of the other bridging (dis)harmony to the visual. The vocal architecture, blind interaction, and movement score create a space for research and play.

As a permeable practice Oracle is co-created by the participants and the environment. The collective workings as well as each session is unique to the moment and context. Often practicing in public spaces, Oracle offers momentary readings. Until now Caroline Daish, Justine Maxelon and Michel Yang have had practices in train stations, parks, institutions, forests, public libraries, urban gardens, waterways and private living spaces.

The result is a soundscape intuitively self-orchestrated by the collective. The spectator receives the reading as a visual perspective, sonic experience, and spatial-social relation – having thoughts, character and history of its own – revealing the human condition embedded in vocal sounds.

For Oracle’s residency at wpZimmer,

• Daish, Maxelon and Yang will continue to practice, score and document the Oracle body-voice practice in studio, in non-studio, and in public spaces.
• They will practice and evaluate ways of collective working recognising that by caring for each one’s boundaries and contributions, they care for the Oracle practice as a whole.
• They will evaluate their recent and ongoing projects on the level of collective working ways, gathering artistic questions surfaced, treating our documentations (graphic scores, images, videos, automatic writings).