Flat Recordings CD 01 12

Compact Disk 01 12

TOCSIN
University of Natal – Durban
October 1994

Organized by Matthias Schneider-Hollek, Melissa Marrins and John Roome; this was a collaboration between composition students from the University of Natal (UND) and Fine Art students from Technikon Natal. Schneider-Hollek, from Germany, was a visiting composition lecturer at the UND at that time, and Marrins who knew Schneider-Hollek acted as the liaison between the two institutions. Roome was responsible for organizing the Technikon students.
The FLAT was approached to participate in discussions and meetings and to get involved with the event. Though this was not at all a FLAT project, the stage had been set by events such as the Internotional and our performance at Jam & Co. More experimental performance work in Durban seemed to be ‘catching on’, at that time and many of the people involved in this event were or had been part of the FLAT, including Paterson, Marrins, Barry, Mansfield and Martyn from the Technikon Fine Art department; and UND composition student Tione Scholtz.
Meijer announced in the paper:

Tonight at 7pm fine art students from Technikon Natal and composition students from Natal University are collaborating in TOCSIN, a multimedia event. This performance piece will take place at the Howard College Theatre on the campus of Natal University and thereabouts.

These students proposed a collaborative ‘happening’ on the campus of the University of Natal, at the Howard College Theater. This was a perfect setting, because the large cylindrical, double-tiered space, with its many side rooms, was not only acoustically ideal, but offered an active site for the participants. I was initially involved, but later opted not to take part. However, on the evening of the event, I brought along the ‘Miracle Filter’ (cassette recorder) and began to actively record the events as they unfolded. In a sense, I too became a performer and a participant in the entire process. In my recording I interviewed many individuals in the large audience, asking them their opinions of the show. Many spoke positively to the fact that Technikon and University students were collaborating together, but other non-art or non-music students, who were studying nearby in the library, negatively expressed a concern over the excessive noise.

The evening was conceived as a ‘multiple happening’, with many activities and performances occurring simultaneously throughout the building. In one hallway, four amped performers including Marrins made ‘noise’ by scratching sand-paper against different surfaces while beating on various percussive instruments. In front of them, Barry meticulously and methodically cleaned the floor for the entire evening. As he removed the dust, his cleaning efforts eventually produced a shiny (medical) cross in the centre of the floor. Martyn participated by sleeping on a mattress for the entire show. Mansfield, who was nowhere to be found for most of the evening, had been hidden in a box. He suddenly appeared out of the box, his body painted gold.
In a small room under the stair-case, Marrins had created a disturbing installation from pornographic material, and in another room, painting students covered each other with paint. They then ‘painted’ a large canvass with their bodies, recalling Yves Klein’s performances. In another space, two composition students played ping-pong, while recording and projecting the sound. Scholtz in a space adjacent set up a ‘jazz-rock’ band and played a number of his noise-jazz-rock-fusion pieces reminiscent of the work of John Zorn. Pre-recorded and augmented sound bytes, composed by Paterson and Schneider-Hollek, also filtered throughout the entire space.
Other than my ‘interview’ recordings, Paterson's minimal compositions for voice remain the only surviving document of the event and appear on the CD - FLAT Recordings. In a later interview with Paterson, I asked him about this work:

Allen: Can you describe your input into this event?
Paterson: I made an installation about the monotony of process art and music.
Allen: Could you talk about the ideas you were working with in this text/audio piece?
Paterson: The piece just followed the structure of any audio or written text. “One thing after another”. Even if I tried to deviate from this pattern one thing still followed on from the next.
Allen: Is it significant that the text is read by people other than yourself? Like a composer.
Paterson: I think you are getting the picture, Siemon. The work echoed its surroundings, the goings on etc. I think in the context of the event the work disappeared, which I personally enjoyed. Very much like my ‘thought houses’. It worked quite well although I felt that by having the performance in a sequence, it drew attention away from the anonymity of the art-work. Draw your own conclusions.