Anastasia Clarke — SELF/WORK

SELF/WORK entertains notions of labor, power, and authority in matters of physical, emotional, and spiritual healing. Set in a dystopian retreat center, the piece engages with doctor and charlatan, placebo and medicine, and phenomena of healing better explained by metaphysics than by hard science.

Anastasia Clarke f.k.a. AC Diamond composed SELF/WORK for their master’s thesis at Mills College in 2018. The demi-theatrical piece is set in a dystopian retreat center where healer and patient engage in a battle of wills modeled on a Jungian concept of countertransference, as described through texts of the homeopath Edward C. Whitmont in Psyche and Soma: The Alchemy of Healing. The original performance features heavily around a sprawling hybrid instrument-controller based on Michel Waisvisz’s cracklebox circuit, with two performers embodying ‘healer’ and ‘patient’ archetypes to interact with copper ‘cracklepads’ that unfold the work’s sound design. Versioned in this release as an audio drama, Clarke performs all voice parts and added the use of the Buchla 200-E modular system at Elektronmusikstudion in Stockholm.

As part of Giorno Poetry Systems’ first year of programming in the historic artist loft at 222 Bowery, Soap Library invited AC Diamond❋ to collaborate with video artist Suz / Murray❋❋. The first-time collaboration featured AC’s handmade electronic instruments and software programs, with Suz / Murray visually interpreting the performance in real time through the use of projected live feed and embodied camerawork.

AC Diamond (they/them) is the nascent stage moniker of Lenapehoking/New York based-composer and artist-technologist Anastasia Clarke. AC programs and builds creative music technology to use in performance, fragmenting narrative material with their devices in order to spin it into ineffable new shapes and stories. Their recordings have been released on Infrequent Seams, (((Cave))), and Soap Library. Anastasia is also an archivist, and serves as Adjunct Faculty in Music Technology at NYU Steinhardt.

SELF/WORK releases on Tuesday, July 9, 2024 in limited edition cassette tape and digital formats. Each tape is accompanied by a glass test tube filled with lavender, clary sage, and sandalwood incense sourced from Bed Stuy wellness center The Holistic Home Company — the same scent that will waft through the space during the performance, and a playful nod to Giorno’s use of raspberry-flavored incense in his Electronic Sensory Poetry Environments of the 1960s.

❋ Anastasia served as John Giorno’s archivist for nearly 10 years.

❋❋ Their collaboration was born from a chance meeting at Herbert Von King dog park at the prompting of their dogs, Beacon and Boots.

Performance photography by Walter Wlodarczyk.

Special thanks to Grimm Artisanal Ales.

This project is supported, in part, by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.