The evolution of creative space in the era of Deep Listening
Swiss Artist in Manipur

James Khangenbam *

Julie Beauvais's art workshop in Manipur

A performer, curator and director of traditional operas began collaborating with contemporary music ensembles, composers and musicians in New York. She works with dancers and actors and has a good match with musicians.

Her love for the music and sound keeps her alert of what is happening around the music scene in the world. Her calling for the music was finally answered when she met Pauline Oliveros the famous American composer who introduced the concept of deep listening in the music world.

Julie Beauvais who hails from Switzerland feels that ‘Deep listening is the discipline most in tune with the deep movements and great shifts in the world today. She receives numerous invitations to major artistic gatherings that focus on deep listening as a genre. Deep listening is a concept where the musicians switches from I write music, I create music, I do music to I listen.

Julie felt that Pauline Oliveros who passed away in 2016, created something visionary that was ahead of her time. Julie met her and people working with her. Inspired by her work, Julie founded The Witness in 2018 (www.thewitness.earth): Around the world, transdisciplinary groups of artists, scientists, and activists in collaboration with their local communities, are listening to our imperiled planet’s messages around potential collapse — or hope for rehabilitation.

Their research, which incorporates audio, video, text, and other creative platforms, implores us to witness what may disappear forever, as well as build, with great urgency, new networks of caregiving for the earth. The Witness shares this research through a global map that highlights the relationship between humans and our non-human kin.

Julie and her creative partner Horace Lundd are in Manipur with a performance titled – Orlando - New Paradigm Opera, Manipur Tour supported by Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia and Canton du Valais.

Nachom Arts Foundation in collaboration with Sandbox collective is hosting the event at The Giving Tree Matai, Charshung, Ukhrul and Yumpham Space, Imphal.

Julie Beauvais's art workshop in Manipur

Julie will also conduct a workshop under the theme - Orlando the Future is Fluid, Constructing Integral Spaces. Chaoba Thiyam, a popular Manipuri folk musician with be the guest sound artists in the performance.

Julie with her sensibilities in an exclusive interview opined that,” It is not about staging new contemporary music but it is about breaking the walls out of all this cities, indoor places, seats where people watch the show, representation, there is the world, in the forest with communities who are in deep relation with the environment. That to me is opera”.

She continued, “Opera is where transdisciplinary is, where vastness is, those are the constant of opera, if you have to choose a territory. We are transdisciplinary, we have sound art, choreography, movement, we have architecture. Maybe we are beyond opera. For all of us who are part of the project and also for the audience we are far beyond the frontal, we are far beyond the two dimension and you know now they are not talking about the big bang but the big bounce. It is like feeling the pulse. The Universe is completely breathing. I do feel that this dimension is coming now in all these works that we are all doing”.

As she landed in Imphal this January with her team she expressed that,” she felt glad to feel the pulse to be outdoor with people who are really creative and quite free from all the standards”.