"1, 2" is an improvised work performed in two iterations by Lauren Tosswill. The sources of sound are Lauren's live vocals, amplified but otherwise unaffected, and the unamplified sound of approximately forty metal folding chairs. In both performances, repetitious speech and gesture are catalysts for automatic decision making. These automatic decisions carry suggestions of the shape of invisible, internal processes. Rather than an exploration of personal interiority, these internal processes reveal the shape of conspiring forces of nature, history, and culture, and offer the body as a point of intersection for these forces. The performances speak to a belief in the potential of sound as a vision that reveals both the past and the far away entangled* with our present here.

The performance hall where the performances took place was arranged in this way: the chairs for the audience were located in the middle of the room in a configuration of concentric squares. This same kind of arrangement of chairs can be found in performances of Sacred Harp, a traditional Christian choral music that originated in New England and was later preserved by and associated with the American South. While Lauren Tosswill performed both iterations of "1, 2", she was obscured from the view of the audience by an opaque partition dividing the expansive performance hall in half.

Both performances of "1, 2" were performed live and back to back in the summer of 2021 at Bard College in upstate New York.

Many thanks for assistance with the creation of these performances and with the realization of this audio release are owed to David Coccagna, Philip Maier, Jack Chuter, Greg Jamie, Bill Dietz, Kabir Carter, Alexa West, Andrea Sisson, Reed Woolley, Geneva Skeen, L. Klotzman, Andrew Lee, Aristilde Kirby, and Chris Tosswill.

*For thoughts on "entanglement", please see the 2017 essay "Unpayable Debt" by Denise Ferreira da Silva

- Lauren Tosswill
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