Unfading
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Based on the Opera Neither
by Morton Feldman
—
2023
MICHEL LORAND – SARAH DEFRISE (Soprano)
HD color film, 16:9, stereo sound/5.1, 55’
Unfading, based on the opera Neither by Morton Feldman and Samuel Beckett, is a film created following the installation-performance Fading in 2017. The soprano Sarah Defrise interprets this opera for one voice. The piece is sung a capella, that is, without the orchestral part, in a very high tessitura, meaning it really was a vocal performance. The film was made during rehearsals, a time when the opera is, naturally, unfinished. The film is a long tracking shot built on a single sequence of some forty meters, the length of the opera. At the film’s beginning, the singer repeats Beckett’s text. Then the camera moves backwards, stopping a long way from the singer, in the shadows of the film studio. The sound recorded for the film followed the same process: initially close to the performer, gradually it moves away, coming to rest at the very farthest point. Fading and Unfading approach Neither from two opposing temporal positions, one before and the other after the performance of the opera itself.
Neither by Samuel Beckett
to and fro in shadow from inner to outer shadow
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from impenetrable self to impenetrable unself by way of neither
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as between two lit refuges whose doors once neared gently
close, once away turned
from gently part again
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beckoned back and forth and turned away
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heedless of the way, intent on the one gleam or the other
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unheard footfalls only sound
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till at last halt for good, absent for good from self and other
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then no sound
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then gently light unfading on that unheeded neither
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unspeakable home.
