THIS IS HOW YOU WILL DISAPPEAR

BACKGROUND OF THE PIECE

This Is How You Will Disappear is a staged live performance piece created in 2009-2010 by Gisèle Vienne in collaboration with Stephen O’Malley & Peter Rehberg (music), Fujiko Nakaya (fog installation), Shiro Takatani (video), Patrick Riou (light), Dennis Cooper (text), Jonathan Capdevielle, Margrét Sara Gudjónsdóttir or Nuria Guiu Sagarra & Jonathan Schatz (performance & interpretation), José Enrique Oña Selfa (costumes), Les Ailes de l’Urga Patrice Potier, Simon Potier & Martial Vernier (hawks & owl handling) and others. The piece premiered in July 2010 at the Avignon festival and toured between 2010-2015, a total of 69 performances between 2010-today. In 2020 the team reprised the work for performances at Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris (FR) (cancelled because of covid-19), which at last premiered January 2022 at La Maison des arts de Créteil (FR) as part of the Festival d’Automne de Paris. The show will also perform in 2022 at Théâtre National de Bretagne, Rennes and Sadler's Well, London

The original intensive and immersive music score was composed and created by Stephen O’Malley & Peter Rehberg in collaboration with many players/musicians and was recorded and produced in Tokyo, Seattle, Austria, Bretagne and other places. The piece utilises a vast multichannel spatialisation setup incorporating IRCAM SPAT technology for the first time for the DACM company and composers. It was performed as a live mix/diffusion by O’Malley and Rehberg. The expansion of the spatialised sound diffusion possibilities marked a turning point in the extent of the music presented in O’Malley and Rehberg’s collaborations with Gisèle Vienne. The duo would continue working with these multichannel tools for the subsequent original scores for Vienne’s pieces.

After Peter Rehberg’s sudden death in August 2021, O’Malley was tasked with recreating the technical performance aspect of the extensive score. To preserve Rehberg’s music’s legacy and integrity and rebuild the ability to perform the entire score in the performance alone, and maintain the possibility to continue to perform it in the future as a multichannel tape piece. As part of this process, O'Malley worked on the production system in the multichannel studios at INAgrm in Paris, Music Unit with Manuel Poletti in Montrieul, La Becque in La-Tour-de-Pielz, and at Cinema Bellevaux, Lausanne.

Now, for the first time, and with the blessing of Vienne, Peter’s family & the DACM company, Stephen O’Malley will present the multichannel music as a stand-alone intensive listening experience on multichannel systems.

“The music (of This Is How You Will Disappear) reflects the various inner harmonies and conflicts. The compositions of Stephen O’Malley and Peter Rehberg range from displays of Dionysian beauty to spiritual music. This disparity underlines the show’s dramaturgy, whereby speech sometimes becomes impossible and gives way to the intensity of the music, which serves as a Dionysian mirror of the world. The music evokes a demon arising from the depths and plays a purging role while paralleling the theatrical presentation in such a way that makes us face that which lurks within. Thus, the music adds a metaphysical thrust that allows us to go beyond speech and image. We wish to probe and fully exploit this force and metaphysical aspect.” Gisèle Vienne, Paris 2010

More information about This Is How You Will Disappear is here:

www.g-v.fr/en/shows/this-is-how-you-will-disappear

* Note : due to the multichannel aspect of the score, the music of This Is How You Will Disappear has never been released as a stand-alone album. But, the recording session which produced the track "Sexy Angel" later developed into the Ensemble Pearl album, released by Drag City in 2012.

Dedicated to the memory of Peter Rehberg (1968-2021)