Nguyễn + Transitory’s “Symphony Of Intimacies” is part of a perpetual work-in-progress which started in early 2018 with the piece “Bird Bird, Touch Touch, Sing Sing”. For their presentation at Radialsystem in April, the duo have invited five non-professional performers to join them in a performance that navigates between interdependency, vulnerability, closeness, disorientation and trust. These themes will be explored as forms of collective resistance.

The piece is built around a site-specific, structure-sensitive, touch-based sonic architectural interface made especially for multiple performers by Nguyễn + Transitory in collaboration with stage designer Lina Oanh Nguyễn. Maoyi, Kamila Metwaly, Andrés Pinto Álvaro, Mieko Suzuki and Monica Vanesa Tedja collectively transform sounds through touch, attempting to fuse the body with the instrument being played. The body not only touches the instrument, but becomes a conductor as well, generating a composition live and in real time and conducting the fluctuating electrical currents that are transmitted into a modular synthesizer.

This dynamic diffuses classical relationships, roles and hierarchies often present among director-composer-performer constellations and creates a situation that allows the complexities of collective agency to unfold. In this piece, touch becomes an essential tool of communication, a carrier and receiver of sound, and a tool through which agencies are renegotiated and the collective is sustained.