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A hallucinogenic portrait of Tokyo is set to take over the West End Cultural Centre tonight.
“Re:Gendo” is a collaboration between famed electronic sound artist Carl Stone and vocalist Akaihirume that uses multi-channel sound, video projection and live performance to transport audiences through a landscape that seems familiar, but also eerily different.
This transportation is the only one of its kind in Canada on Carl Stone and Akaihirume’s latest tour, and it’s been brought about by a relationship fostered by the Send & Receive Festival for the past six years.
“I had long desired to bring Carl Stone to Winnipeg,” says Cam Scott, Send & Receive’s artistic director. “I’d been in contact with him in 2020 when we couldn’t realize an in-person performance.”
What followed was an intercontinental performance from the United States and Japan for Winnipeg audiences with Carl Stone (who now calls Tokyo home) trapped in California collaborating with Akaihirume on composed and improvised pieces in real time. Now, audiences can enjoy this experimental sound quality in person.
“Re:Gendo” combines abstracted images of Tokyo with a quadrophonic sound set up (four separate outputs placed in the corners of the room allowing audiences to hear different things as they walk around). This type of sound experience adds to the eeriness of the show’s visual elements, which were captured during the height of the public health lockdowns when Tokyo’s streets were far from their normally bustling selves.
“You look at these visuals and it’s very uncanny to see a city [as] bustling as Tokyo unpeopled,” says Scott. “And you have to imagine all of the uses and occasions for these buildings and streets and structures and so on that you might not be used to seeing in this fashion. But, we’re going to undertake this journey together.”
As dystopian as this may seem and as harrowing as it may be to remember those days in the heights of the COVID-19 public health lockdowns, Scott notes that this project probably wouldn’t have been fully realized if not for the innovations and artistic possibilities that were achieved in that time. “It was a moment where things were really up for grabs,” he explains, “and when we returned to live performance, it was with a really refreshed mandate and a sense of immense gratitude.”
“I hope that that’s not lost on anybody either when we revisit the nadir of the pandemic, it’s not a frightening realization so much as an uncanny one. And I think that doing it together is an interesting opportunity to think about and track some of the opportunities that arose from that as well.”
“Re:Gendo” begins at 8 p.m. at the West End Cultural Centre on May 8. For tickets and more information, visit the website of the Send & Receive Festival.