Alchemist. Archeologist. Historian. Storyteller. Meredith Monk transcends the title of artist.
Without distinctions between disciplines, Monk's pieces, fusing movement, music, voice, film and theater, flesh out human issues, connect different layers of reality and give extraordinary meaning to the ordinary.
With a body of more than 100 works from film projects to albums to full length operas and site-specific works, Monk's projects, revealing the micro and macro realms of existence, take on significance beyond time constraints and cultural boundaries.
"All times and places can exist at one moment," Monk claims. Take, for example, her film "Book of Days," (1989) in which a medieval plague is linked to the AIDS epidemic or a child's feverish fit "Quarry: an opera" (1976) which escalates into a rally reminiscent of Nazi activity, with performers marching and shouting around the restless child's bed.
Monk joins chunks of history and humanity, creating art that exists in every place and time.
"In a sense I think of myself as a vocal archeologist, trying to dig down to the most fundamental human utterances, the most elemental forms," Monk described. She works with sounds more than words, allowing audiences to formulate their own images from pieces that range from solos like "Our Lady of Late" (1972) in which she accompanied herself with a wineglass that changed pitch as she sipped from it between musical sections, to full-length multimedia operas like "Atlas" (1991).
Through her extended vocal technique, Monk explores musically what she calls the "voice of the oracle, the voice of memory." She restores the forgotten and offers utopian visions of the future.
The dance historian, Sally Banes, writes, "Her works are like historical novels of the future and science fiction of the past."
Monk's newest piece, "The Politics of Quiet," which had its world premiere this summer at Copenhagen's Cultural Capital of Europe Festival, explores human roots and ancestry in an age in which even fax machines are too slow. How do we still speak and share with each other? How do we still respect the distinctiveness of different cultures? And can we do all this within our technological world?
Monk describes the work as being "about community and how we're in danger of losing it. It's about slowing down enough to experience the moment. It's about shadow and coexisting."
Monk uses images of beekeeping as a primordial technology that has transcended time. The complex system of the beehive has lasted for centuries and continues to within our computer driven world. Beeswax also is a preservative.
In "The Politics of Quiet," ordinary objects, like a hairdryer, are dipped in beeswax and water and put on a shrine. Things normally taken for granted are turned into archeological finds, all part of the cycle of the past informing the present.
Monk emphasizes thinking about the commonplace. What may seem banal actually signifies the distinctness of humans and cultural traditions, without which we are rootless. Monk questions what archeologists will make of these relics in 200 years.
Buddhist texts, meditations on technology and the approaching millennium are themes thread through "The Politics of Quiet," which becomes as much a ritual as an opera, dance or theatrical work. With 10 singers / dancers, two instrumentalists and two Ann Arbor children, the 90-minute work has distinct sections and moods, from optimism about the 20th century to the acknowledgment of pain and dark sides of community.
Merideth Monk performs in "The Politics of Quiet," the author's latest work, which will be performed at The Power Center Friday and Saturday.