Inter Inter Inter; a Rational Rec Review

Last Tuesday at Rational Rec was a blast. Thank you to everyone who came and took part, you all really threw yourselves into the tasks and really made the evening work, what an amazing enthusiastic crowd!

We began the evening with a print run where we went from table to table like a screenprint serenade. Where there had been a blank sheet on the table, we left behind us a spread of pages for a book. These pages contained tasks that related to the music sets in the evening. Before the second Act we flipped the pages and printed the second side, working right to left and then out the fire exit. Before the third Act we slipped the pages away and started binding the book at speed. One of the last acts was cancelled and so Murray helped me carry in the table as far as it would go into the room and we carried on binding furiously. A volunteer sitting on a board served as a finishing press, but soon we got urged over to the middle of the dance floor to do the casing in. The event had got a bit carnivalesque by this point and some DJs were playing and people were dancing around us as we worked. We got it cased in and I looked up, for the first time in quite a few minutes, to see a crowd around us applauding. Matt Cresswell sat on the book as a nipping press until it was time to present it to Emily from Chelsea Library at the front. People continued leafing through the book, even though people were dancing right next to them until closing time.

It was wonderful to work more closely with Matt Shlomowitz and David Helbich and get an insight on how composers work. We love the way their work doesn’t take itself too seriously. Matt’s piece especially is one of my favourite things I’ve seen. A dancer and a musician, in this case Shila and Tomma the phd recorder player, come up with a series of actions and sounds that tell a story following Matt’s score. It is really simple, perfect and complex. Shila is an amazing dancer with an awe inspiring memory and the ingenious Tomma had a recorder about seven feet tall. When we first saw it in the room nobody could work out what it was for. I thought it was a telescope.

Our thanks to Ana and Renee and Murray who stepped in when things went haywire, and to Matt Russell and Cecilia for planning a fantastic event, and Emily with her video camera and special collection.