Come Kingdom Come

“Come Kingdom Come” is an experimental opera concerning millennialism and apocalyptic thought and theory; an exploratory comparison of this past turn of the millennium to its prior. A geography in time and space is formed using various field recordings of the before, during, and after-math of natural disasters and other phenomena; the seismic activity of an earthquake, thunderous tsunami, VLF of a sun storm, the quiet of Chernobyl, endangered species of bird calling in the desert, shaped and molded towards a tapestry of rapture, a desperate search of meaning, a whirlwind of ecstatic joy and fear.

The AV performance begins in darkness with VLF recordings of our magnetosphere surrounding the seated audience. Slowly emerging one by one, then disappearing just as subtle come textured images we cannot quite make out, like the impression of a bright light upon our closed eyelids. The images begin to slow their reveal to the beautiful photographic work of sound and visual artist Olivia Block. The technique of exposing the development process without a direct subject…strangely powerful in their minimalism, slowly they weave in and out of each other on three walls forming a triptych as the sound begins to build into the first act, performed live electronically in surround-sound by the artist. The performance bookends with bringing in a live-feed of the electromagnetic current of the space mixing in duet with the VLF from the beginning, bringing us to a full but changed circle.

This work was born from an album-based project finished this year, that was born from an original performance project idea back in 2004, that will be released this February on Two Acorns: (http://www.thesingularwe.org/twoacorns/)

We find ourselves again full circle…

Some examples of the songs from the album can be found here:

Act Five:A Fluid Dawn (http://soundcloud.com/maile-colbert/5-act-five-a-fluid-dawn)

Ouverture for That Day (http://soundcloud.com/maile-colbert/ouverture-for-that-day)

I try to work with the project in a context and site-specific way with the location of a performance. If time for research and gathering of recordings both current and archival of the areas, this becomes integrated into the work. For example, the work was first performed in San Francisco, April 2012, at the Activating the Medium Festival. An excerpt from that performance can be seen here…

Director: Maile Colbert (US, Portugal)

Photography: Olivia Block (US)

Dancer: Rafaela Salvador (PT)

Work with SpectrumGL: Jesse Gilbert (US)

Author(s)