Spectral Arrows is an ongoing series of long-duration performances for guitar and electronics. In Spectral Arrows, Fusinato arrives at the venue when it opens for business, sets up his equipment facing a wall and proceeds to play for the whole day until the end of business hours. Fusinato presents himself here in the guise of a worker, clocking on and unceremoniously clocking off at the end, refusing to allow the behind-the-scenes mystery of rehearsals and preparations to lend an aura to the performance, and affirming the deskilled ethos of his work.ÊFor the audience, the length of the performance frustrates the expectation of a manageable form, forcing all but the hardiest audience members to content themselves with only a fragment of the whole. Even for those who stick it out, the extended duration, like in the late works of Morton Feldman, destroys the listener's ability to retain and assess the structure of the performance. Breaking with both the traditional form of the musical performance and, through Fusinato's resolutely anti-social position facing away from the audience, the standard affective relationship between audience and performer, the sound of Spectral Arrows becomes a monumental aural sculpture, filling the space, not with steel or concrete, but with vibrations travelling through air. Spectral arrows: Rotterdam presents a rapidly edited sequence of events from a performance in May 2013: stuttering live concret, wailing feedback, Xenakis-esque swarms of descending glissandi, abusive guitar wrangling, walls of harsh static.
Recorded by Gerben Kokmeijer -