gaip words

these pages contain text around the subject of GAIP

GAIP is a mode of existence that occupies non-striated space.

GAIP may appear as a performance that does not depend on performers.

GAIP may appear as a performance that does not depend on audience.

GAIP may appear as a performance that does not depend on creating 'meaning'.

GAIP may appear without a performance frame. In so doing, GAIP finds expression through the inter-being of participants willing to be human.

Rob Vincs July 2014

Ren - July 2022

on the precipice of some space else, hovers the thought of gaip's presence, it's visibility. Tenuous, submerged, teetering between a conscious presence and the void that awaits us all.

Does activity passed continue to resonate, to plausibly affect a present moment ? - that's for each one of us to know.

Where is what comes next ? can we connect to ancestral continuity, a past through present future movement, dreaming.

If a communal force has submerged from whence arises renewal ?

Ren - GAIP has a home, June 2017

Through working at the Rupanyup studio it is becoming clearer that this space is embodying the GAIP ethos without effort or intent - marvellous!

I learn every day.

40 trees planted today for those to come.

Clinton Green - GAIP-related 12 hour performance, March 2016

“I felt a responsibility to 'perform' when people entered. I felt like a troubadour, setting up shop in the town centre, waiting for the audience to come then performing when they did. What would've happened if I didn't, if I just kept sitting there/laying there?”

Ren - Mallee, December 2015

The pine tree's sound is made audible by the wind. The wind is made audible by the pine tree. Thanks to the wind I can hear the pine tree. Thanks to the pine tree I can hear the wind.

THIS Ensemble Wimmera tour, November 2015

Spending time in a physically small location allowed a relation with the details, with the feelings of that spot. Knowing a tree, from different visual perspectives, in changing light and temperature, knowing the space between that tree and the river, noticing the slight rise and fall of the earth, particular plants, fallen logs, certain sounds and their resonances or lack of, treating this spot as ‘your’ place because you’ve spent time observing and listening there and experiencing how it relates to neighbouring areas as you walk through your space to adjoining spaces. Where does ‘your’ space end and the other place begin? The places we have experienced begin to feel like a a pathway, a trail, songlines perhaps. Ren Walters

Intersection, May 2015

I realized that this event was bringing into question the condition of the ‘performer’ (and the performance) as distinct from a non-performer living life, and, by extension, the space between these modes of being/experience. There was indeed preparation in conception and implementation of the event, and thought process in terms of how my part would unfold. Here was a fitful, haphazard emergence of the potentiality of what Intersection might be, and a morphing between those imaginings and actual unfolding of site related performance.

In the morning, the drive to the city site enabled a clarification that if no co-performers joined me that was fully acceptable, and not a disappointment. I also began clearing my mind of pre-empting what may happen. I had explored this in my imagination previously, playing out possible scenarios of behavior and approach, deciding for myself (I had invited others to bring whatever they wanted to the event) not to bring anything special but to allow the circumstances to supply the material to work with. As I parked the car and gathered my gear and put on my hat, I felt the performative figure clarify. The walk to the tram, moving from the insular car to the more exposed and public entity, was another shift. On the tram ride I became aware of the gaze of the other (‘the audience’) and the sense of being a player, and an awareness of a rising energy of someone about to do something purposeful, with intent. Ren Walters

Jenny Ruth Barnes - curator of CURRENT, March 2015.

The promotional text for the event described a

A celebration of performance made in the moment with an inquiry into the artfulness of domiciliary activities. This Current event will feature improvised performances from pairs of musicians coupled with a dancer. These sets will be interspersed with solo performances from artists using words and language. And ….. all the while an assortment of domestic activities will be performed by a variety of artists.

“My consideration to employ these activities into the Current event comes from acknowledging interest in the social outskirts of performances, the art that lays within the activities, pleasure, and to serve as respite from a long duration of personal interactions and concentration on generation and creativity.” Note to performers - Jenny Ruth Barnes, March 2015

Hannah Courtin Wilson - Testing Grounds response to GAIP event.

"Sunday June 29, 2014.

The inclusive and experiential nature of a General Assembly of Interested Parties at Testing Grounds was inspiring. To be able to move within a space like Testing Grounds and be physically shifted between urgent trumpets, saxophone, the smell of smoke from the open fires, spot lit dancers, various percussion instruments being hit and rattled both gently and fiercely and the disparate performances not feeling piecemeal was credit to all involved. From an onlookers perspective, to be privy to the trust and respect among the musicians, performers and artists within GAIP was invigorating."

Ren Walters - concerning the beginnings of GAIP.

General Assembly of Interested Parties (GAIP) est. 2011, Melbourne, Australia.

“GAIP was the invention of an ‘interest group’ as an attempt to draw out what was in 2011 creative suggestion and potential rather than actuality, in and around Melbourne.

An amalgam of interested parties is welcoming to anyone interested in the activity and there is no specification of what that activity is. The staging of ‘CURRENT’ (“…a celebration of music made in the moment of performance - aimed at fostering community across the spectrum of age and experience.”) in September 2012 became the fruition of this etheric organization whose business was to fabricate, to pretend, to play to the potentiality that was lurking around Melbourne.

GAIP was employed as a way of avoiding my own individual identity being emphasized whenever an event was publicized, but also as a way of loosely integrating a few people with similar notions about music performance. It was a way of activating through example: drawing out latent creative energy, stimulating practitioners, genre variants, community and generational renewal.

“What happens when the performance frame that illuminates the singular artist, or group artistic identity, shifts it’s locus from ‘the music’ understood as a “meaningful” construct, to, the ecology of a community of artists generating a self-organising kinship expressed through improvised music [or performance]? It must be then that the terms and conditions by which musical performance is understood have changed.”[1]

‘The concert and site-specific performances of GAIP and CURRENT have generated a language of de-territorialisation, relationships, discovery, empathy, interaction, healing and support amongst the practitioners and, in so doing, also offer new possibilities for audience as collaborator engagement.’

GAIP is an evolving notion, a becoming. When GAIP encountered Arin Dodo in Madrid in 2013, its actuality shifted. “

Ren Walters, 2013 (in a response to the question ‘explain GAIP’).

[1] quote from Dr. Rob Vincs in ‘The Architecture of Empathy; deterritorialising improvised music performance.’ by Dr.Rob Vincs and Ren Walters