“Elms Willdick is a musical live duo that explores sounds, rhythms and harmonies in an intuitive way. Occasionally they flirt with musical genres and traditions, but once they get too close, they quickly run away from it. They also leave their instrument, which they feel most at home, to help shape their musical zoo with the metronome, bicycle chain and megaphone. Their performances are infectious and exude an ode to play, improvisation and imagination.” (Concertgebouw Brugge) It seems that Elms Willdick has a fundamental interest in the borders of music and sound in a performative context. A recurring question in the residencies (Q-O2, N9, De Werf / KAAP) is when and how does sound empowers (or not) what we see, and vice-versa. How to perform a sound without sounding a performance?
Elms Willdick loves the zoo, but often we need to focus on one animal. One of the animals we want to take a closer look at is human interaction and social distancing. During one of the residencies where we ought to beware of social distancing. So we worked with two guitars and one string which was attached from the one guitar to the other with a distance of 1,5m. The pitch of the extended guitars depends on the tension between the two performers. https://youtu.be/YhSZLBtP6PY (Concertgebouw / Brugge) https://youtu.be/r5I9hMDW-d4 (N9 / Eeklo)
Extended guitars: two guitars interconnected with one string. The tension between the performers determines the pitch. The way the performers strike and pull the guitars determines the overtones. The micro-tonality and sonically nuances require performative precision and problematize inter-human dynamics and interaction. This way of performing sound feels intuitively like the right balance between what we see and what we hear. Moreover the pitch caused by the tensions (of the prepared guitarists) refer strongly to different ways of human interaction.