Obstructed Recitals explores the ways in which struggle, effort, and even failure shape a performance by incorporating a variety of obstructions as a generative strategy. Each performer’s negotiation with their obstruction creates a new piece of music, which may or may not be recognisable as the original piece of music they have chosen to recite.
The series speaks to the way discomfort and constraint can determine both musical outcomes as well as the trajectory of an artist’s development. Based on an athletic model of development where growth occurs through restraint, strength develops through the healing that follows breakdown caused by resistance.
The full recital comes to life as the dark gathers each evening in the KALEIDOSCOPIC window.
Michaela Davies is an Australian artist, musician and psychologist, and fuses these multiple disciplines in her work. Her work investigates sonic possibilities, human limits, and the nature of agency, using electric muscle stimulation and other methods to both obstruct and extend human capabilities. Over the last decade Michaela has amassed a catalogue of work around these themes, presented worldwide at galleries and festivals including the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry, London V&A, Beijing Media Art Biennale, Experimental Intermedia New York, Currents International New Media Festival, ISEA, Mona Foma Festival Hobart, and Sonica Festival UK where she was 2013 Artist in Residence.
Kaleidoscopic 