This form of documentation was inspired by a video documentary of a performance by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company: “Tacita Dean’s Craneway Event.” Dean’s video documentation captures the event and its process by filming only rehearsals just days before the opening-there is no taping of the live performance before an audience. The effect is a deeper focus on process rather than an attempt to mimic the experience of the live event. Dean’s focus on the rehearsal seems the best way to experience Cunningham’s “Craneway Event” after the fact, since no media-neither film nor text-can fully capture and convey the presence of live performance. In the case of SF Guerrilla Opera, rehearsals can be equated to our email exchanges, blog posts, and Facebook invites-there is no other direction or practice.

Posted Fri Oct 14, 2011 at 2:45 PM:

In solidarity with #OccupyWallStreet, #OccupySanFrancisco, #OccupyOakland, and all other occupations, SF Guerrilla Opera invites you to sing with us in Union Square, San Francisco THIS Monday, October 17th.

Starting at 12 noon we will perform this score:

[begin score]

Sing from The Wall Street Journal until you can’t sing anymore.

[end score]

As always, you are invited to sing however you’d like and for as long as you’d like. Not being able to sing anymore can mean anything from losing your voice to having to go to work to getting bored to…?

Although we will collectively perform in Union Square, we invite you to perform this score anywhere in San Francisco, the Bay Area, or elsewhere. If you do join us in Union Square, feel free to come whenever-we’ll sing for hours.

Please send video, audio, textual, and other documentation to tcomitta@gmail.com and we’ll consider posting it on our blog!

Cheers,

SF Guerrilla Opera