MEDIATHEK

Temporary Distortion is an ensemble of experimental artists working across disciplines to create performances, installations, films, albums, and works for the stage. Interdisciplinary artist Kenneth Collins formed Temporary Distortion in 2002, and under his leadership the company has the mission to explore the potential tensions and overlaps found between practices in visual art, theater, cinema, and music.

The company’s recent work has focused on long-duration, installation-based performance featuring live music, where spectators freely come and go throughout allnight events. Our project, MY VOICE HAS AN ECHO IN IT, is a six-hour durational performance of live music, spoken text, and video set within a freestanding, soundproof installation that is 24 feet long by 6 feet wide.

The audience watches the performance through two-way mirrored windows lining the walls of the installation, creating a mise en abyme, as the performer’s reflections stretch off infinitely in both directions inside the box. The performers, confined within this soundproof box, are heard only through headphones and cannot see the audience on the other side of the glass. While viewing the performers through the two-way mirrors, audience members listen with the headphones to live music ranging from drifty ambient sounds to erasure poetry to raucous punk-inspired anthems along the outside perimeter of the installation.

When not listening to the live performance through the headphones, the audience experiences an ambient and atmospheric prerecorded score delivered by speakers attached to the outside of the installation. This original score was composed to serve as counterpoint to the live event and is used create a greater sense of dual environments--the world of the performers inside of the box and that of the audience standing outside.

MY VOICE HAS AN ECHO IN IT features performances by Kenneth Collins, Scott Fetterman, Jenna Kyle, and John (Sully) Sullivan. Text, installation design, and direction is by Collins; music composition and sound design is by Sullivan; video design is by Fetterman.

Temporary Distortion operates out of New York City, where we develop our work together from conception to production. The company has also presented work in over 20 cities in the US, Canada, France, Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Russia, Australia, South Korea, and Japan. Our work has been shown at theaters, museums, galleries, cinemas, and at various festivals worldwide.