juliana snapper

Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE, USA (May 5, 2016): a performance by Juliana Snapper.

A lot of time is needed… to give chaos some style is a commissioned work in response to Bemis Center’s Time + Space: Beginnings exhibition.

It was part of the Artist-in-Residence Program Liveness Is Critical — a program dedicated to critical discourse exploring interdisciplinary performance in contemporary art, including work that traverses the theater, dance, and performance fields (Ellina Kevorkian, artistic Director for Residency Programs).

Ellina Kevorkian says :

“ Snapper uses voice, breath, and momentum as tools for instrumentation. The audience and Snapper will participate in a series of breath-moving exercises as she considers bacteria and breath as the elemental beginnings that form an oxygenated environment. An improvised aria, intuitive vocal techniques engaging different pitches, chords, and rhythms, and a whole lot of dry ice both direct and trace moving breath through a palette of emotion-triggering frequencies. ”

The project's title alludes to several lines of a poem by Pier Paolo Pasolini “Al Principe” (from the collection La religione del mio tempo, 1961).

Composer/Pianist Andrew Infanti (who works often with Juliana Snapper) presented her with a musical setting of the poem (for voice & harmonium).

Since many of their collaborative projects have extended over many years of doubt, meditation, forgetting, revision, etc., Pasolini's expression speaks deeply to both artists:

Per essere poeti, bisogna avere molto tempo :
ore e ore di solitudine sono il solo modo
perché si formi qualcosa, che è forza, abbandono,
vizio, libertà, per dare stile al caos.

[ In order to be a poet, a lot of time is needed,
hours and hours being alone are the only means
for framing something which is strength, surrender,
vice, freedom, so one can give chaos some style. ]