“I found it to be a magical, unforgettable watch.” – Dominic Rivron, INTERNATIONAL TIMES
Lyn Hodnett – flugelhorn, voice, cello, assorted percussion, objects
Gill Whiteley – viola, chapel harmonium, psaltery, melodica, transistor radio, objects
You can watch this video here, or you can buy and download – the video element is included as a bonus item.
Spontaneous drawings with freely improvised soundtrack by artist-improvisers Gill Whiteley & Lyn Hodnett
As Les Petroleuses, we are a duo of multimedia improvising artists. Besides being an homage to les petroleuses (women of the 1871 Paris Commune), the idea of being musical ‘arsonists’, playing with ‘fire’, ripping up and incendiarising conventions, appeals to us.
In summer 2024, we ‘ played’ the Surrealist ‘exquisite corpse’ game. Independently, we each made videos of ourselves doing one-minute drawings (heads, shoulders, groins and legs) and (blindly) exchanged them at each stage by snail-mail.
Alongside this, we independently created freely improvised one-minute sonic pieces in response to each body phase (again, totally unaware of the other person’s audio). Finally, we each unfolded and revealed the completed ‘corpses’ and, in keeping with our ‘petroleuses’ theme, we ceremoniously burnt them. Gill then worked creatively, collating and overlaying the unedited audios, and combining the video clips to produce Two Exquisite Corpses.
Lyn Hodnett and Gill Whiteley describe themselves as ‘multimedia improvising artists’. They perform together as ‘Les Petroleuses’, the name being a homage to the women of the Paris Commune. The idea of being cultural ‘arsonists’, setting conventions alight, appeals to them. (That the women of the Paris Commune were arsonists was a rumour spread with the intention of smearing them, but it stuck and the resultant myth did their cause no harm). On their website Hodnett and Whiteley describe how they ‘do a slow burn, kindle the flames and rip it up sonically, visually and vocally on cello, violin, trumpet, hurdy-gurdy, accordions, wind-up record player, pixiphone, scissors, paper, stone, graphite, vocals, things that jangle, assorted objects, other stuff and whatever takes our fancy…’ Two Exquisite Corpses is the end result of a process. Whiteley and Hodnett played out the Surrealist parlour-game, Exquisite Corpse, in which you draw part of a body, fold over what you’ve drawn, then pass the paper on to the next person to draw the next body-part. In this case, they videoed themselves making the drawings and mailed the results to each other. They also recorded – independently of each other – a short solo improvisation for each part of the body they were drawing. Once they’d finished, they burnt the drawings. Whiteley creatively overlaid and edited together both the videos and the improvisations to create the five-and-a-half minute short film released here. I could say more about it, but the last thing you need in a game of exquisite corpse is a spoiler. Far better to let you watch the film unfold for yourself. All I’ll say is that I found it to be a magical, unforgettable watch. – Dominic Rivron, INTERNATIONAL TIMES
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