splanchnologies

Splanchnology is the scientific study of the viscera, the soft tissues of the body. Splanchnologies are texts and songs that go within the body and explore it as landscape and form in transformation.

The piece is comprised of a number of vignettes: Eyes sprout on a woman's body as her landscape changes. A portal vein is explored as an entrance to another's heart. A woman is torn open, revealing the intricate design of her internal body.

While on first reading these descriptions may appear to be concerned with the messiness and shock value of blood and guts, the performances are anything but gory. Representation of the events and images is achieved primarily through text, sound, and movement combined in a performance that is a sonically and emotionally riveting experience.

This current work is a melding of Lia Pas' talents into performance work that explores anatomy as an imagistic starting point for an understanding of experience. Lia's texts incorporate imagery and excerpts from Gray's Anatomy and other medical references interpreted poetically and descriptively with her own words. The texts are at points spoken or sung, allowing an exploration of the voice in all its range, timbre and potential. Lia's use of the voice as the muscle of the soul is inspired by her work with Roy Hart teachers Richard Armstrong and Enrique Pardo. Through the work, physical movement comes into play as vehicle for both image and text.

People knowledgeable of the work of the New York minimalist school and female vocalists such as Meredith Monk, Laurie Anderson, and Diamanda Galás will be on familiar ground here, as will those aware of the practiced formality of the stylized abstract sounds and movements found in Japanese theatrical forms such as Noh, Kabuki, and Butoh.

Premiere Performance

The world premiere performance of Splanchnologies was given at 7pm on Thursday 28 September 2006. The venue was Studio 3 - Lower Close at the Dartington College of Arts in Totnes, Devon, United Kingdom

Documentation and images of the performance will be available here.

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About Lia Pas

Lia Pas is a Canadian multidisciplinary creator-performer who has worked professionally in the fields of music, writing, and theatre. She completed her Master of Arts in Devised Theatre at Dartington College of Arts in Devon, UK in 2006. Her current work explores anatomy as an imagistic starting point to understand experience. Working with text--both spoken and sung forms--Lia explores the voice in all its range, timbre, and potential. Her music combines drones, trance-like repetition, and rhythmic play with evocative timbral exploration and extended vocal techniques ranging from low growls to high whistle tones. The body being a starting point for her work, physical movement comes into play as a vehicle for both image and text.

See Lia's full bio and curriculum vitae (64K PDF) for more information.