Avoiding and affirming definition

Artistic research by Sean Bell

So far in my artistic research I have worked using early music songs/repertoire. With arrangement as my creative tool, I found freedom working within these parameters, and built a concept driven project from preexisting material. Now I want to explore how I can break out of this framework and create a new starting point for myself. Moving beyond arranging in my practice how can I bridge the roles of composer, performance artist and early music singer, through a focus on concept rather than form?

Since arranging has been both the starting point and the framework of my projects I will have to find elements and ideas that can substitute in both situations. At the same time I wish to keep the drive and skills I have developed in previous projects. This calls for a more detailed investigation of my artistic process. What did I do before? What worked and why?

As a starting point I will explore concepts from different styles of early music repertoire. This will be my approach to historically inspired performance. To start with an idea or concept derived from the music or the context that the music was created in historically. I will try to work with the fundaments of the music without the notes: text, mood, instrumentation, tonality and timbre. To have a fresh approach I will experiment with different compositional tools like graphic scores, free improv, electronics, and live recording. For the different approaches I will also invite collaborators with other expertise and views. The goal would to also try out with a live audience at different stages of the process.

The idea for this research came from people’s reactions to my previous work. They would ask if I considered myself as a composer-performer or just a performer? I would answer that I was a singer (like my education states), realizing that composer-performer was maybe an unexplored identity within my artistic work.

Previous work

The John Dowland Project

Sean Bell presents  the album Dowland Downloaded, an exploration of the music of the great British songwriter and lutenist John Dowland (1563-1626) through a contemporary art pop expression. What happens with the music when the renaissance lute is substituted with a DIY synth? Will it lose its original meaning and aesthetic and only serve as a fragile frame for some wacky synth-pop arrangements? Or could we discover new layers of meaning and different ways of communicating through alternative performance practices?
Armed with a self-built electric baroque guitar and a cassette player, countertenor and performance artist Sean Bell creates his own world where Dowland’s timeless texts and music can unfold.

Album can be found here:

https://pineapplerecords2.bandcamp.com/album/dowland-downloaded

No Joy in the Brilliance of Sunshine

No Joy in the Brilliance of Sunshine is a multimedia performance piece, exploring the use of operatic early music in performance art. Inspired by the book ‘Heart of Darkness’ (1902) by Joseph Conrad it re-imagines music by G. F. Handel (1685-1759) through sound, text, movement and voice. By abandoning a traditional narrative, the elements and styles are invited to interplay. Light and darkness are now the main characters. Abstract combinations of sound and image encourage and allow the audience to experience their own story.

The piece seeks to realise different expressive possibilities by combining elements; audio and visual, movement and sound, operatic style and performative style, text and music. Through this I explore how different languages contrast, interfere and communicate with each other. The space wherein the action takes place is shaped and coloured by the sound, and the sound is accompanied by the movement and presence of the performing body.

In this way I search to combine the theatrical and stylised language of opera with a more abstract performative style and new technology. By exploring the old, stylised music of Handel and its historic background, I broaden the pallet for modern exploration and look both backwords in time and forward to new ways of interpreting and experiencing performance.

No Joy in the Brilliance of Sunshine was developed through my artistic research at The Royal Conservatoire The Hague, NL:

https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/1409514/1409515

‘Stille Amare’ performance at The Annual National Art Exhibition 2021

‘Empio diro tu sei’ from No Joy in the Brilliance of Sunshine 2022