Performed by Michelle O'Rourke

Irish Architectural Archive, Dublin

4 November 2016

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Ausgang seeks to explore what it is for a man to put words into the mouth of a woman in Ireland today. In what ways are the composition and its inherent power structures mediated as Michelle interprets the coded script that is the score? It is rooted in a strand of vocal music in which there is a parity of compositional materials, between extended techniques or ‘undesirable’ sounds and pitched content.

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Text:

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10 and they’re all coming
build a bridge, building bridges
bridge builders
build a wall
Calais to Cathay
Cathy?
barbarian
Noh
Noh plays
Noh
Noh poetry
Ausgang to the east!
no woman is a concrete island
as a psychologist, let me list without elaboration
girl
girl prodigies are forgotten
I believe in the beauty of women
in the treachery of their imaginations
so close to my heart
in the junction of their disenchanted bodies
with the enchanted chromium rails of supermarket counters
in their warm tolerances of my perversions