Ingrid Verweijen

A musical respons and reconstruction of seemingly random material around Lady Gaga. A video generated by a collection of comments on concerts, screenshots, lines from interviews and my observations. It appeals to a more genuine and critical view on the personal experiences of Lady Gaga in relation to the unnatural sound of her modified voice in her published music recordings.  The video reinterprets existing material while taking in the personal experience of the popstar on one hand and the personal experience of the audience on the other hand. The video uses comments that were given on her performance in Paradiso (Holland) in 2009.  This work was created for an exhibition around 50 years of existence of concerthall Paradiso in collaboration with MOAM. 

This performance was born from a YouTube screenshot of Peggy Lee’s video ‘It’s a good day’, that is reconstructed into a

three-dimensional theater set. The theater set includes all the details and buttons of the YouTube bar, but they are all

present as modeled shapes applied around the video window. The time bar is made out of a transparent plastic tube that has a

red ribbon inside it. The red ribbon is pulled every time a new part of the song is finished.

When performing the singer is dressed in a red dress and face covering hat that are designed according to desired and

idealized female standards from the 50’s. I am trying to engage more with the reference of the video clip by trying to embody

the image of a superwoman that a star had in that particular period. The music that I composed for this performance is based on

critical Internet texts, that discuss the way in which female contemporary singers are expected to present and expose

themselves on stage.

The stage presence is an absent element in this performance, since the singer is not visible, because she performs behind a

panel of the actual stage. The non-appearance of the singer in this work is my attempt to overthrow the usual construct of a

musical performance in where the artist exposes herself in front of the audience. My approach on it was to raise the level of

expectations of the public through increasing the mystery around the stage persona while performing. This action is meant to

deprive the viewer of a model to idealize and to project their desires on.

I use the format of the YouTube frame, because YouTube became the usual media arena in where people stage them selves as if

in a live performance. We have gotten so familiarized with the YouTube frame design that our entire perception of video

information we consume is conditioned by these graphical signs.

The work bridges in between times, formats and stage attitudes and it embeds contradictory elements. Such as an absent

performer who is usually visible in many ways or a pop melody that exists out of vulgar and critical words.

This video is an experimental sound and music video, where I approach the practice of music video production as a selfsufficient,

reflective and on-going proces.

'The voice in the screen', is a music video installation, where slides that refer to the history of music video production, are

used to superimpose the scenes. A Vitaphone demonstration film, an early sound- film system is used as a starting point. The

scenes, are inspired by one the first produced music video's; 'the singing duck' by Gus Visser, where easy trickery and well

rehearsed movements remind us of musical shorts or vaudeville.

In this video, the try-outs, the experimentations with the camera the editing and sounds that are made during the production

proces are proposed as the main focus instead.

And the theatrical single shot scenes and fragmented audio recordings work as a tool to approach the production of sound

and video making as a sketch rather then a polished product.

Experimental musical, 2017

The play portrays the social dynamics in a group of musicians and gives an ironic comment on the role of vulnerability in the

practice of music.

The narrative is constructed around the dynamic between the insecure character named Curly Boy, who is going to sing his

first written song as a composer and the other characters of the play. Teacher, Student 1, Other Girl, Blond self assured boy,

Insignificant girl and Student 4, are the rest of the cast. All the lines of these characters are read out during the

performance by a prompter actor.

The stage directions, as written in the initial script, constitute a part of the attributes. These are wooden boards with letters

engraved on them, that glow in the dark.

The Letter Girl is the second performer on stage during the act, she has two roles; first she opens the performance as the

narrator and the second is to operate the attributes that are set on the ground, the action happening under black light.

In this play the traditional notions of theatre are reversed, by giving the stage directions as written in the script a major

role, and by giving the prompter the second leading role. The script itself dominates the play as all the names of the

characters are spoken out by a jingle before any dialogue starts.

The title BLACK OUT refers to the term used by theatre technicians to indicate the end of a performance. The expression

describes as well a physical blackout caused by anxiety problems experienced by performers on stage.

Performance installation

Materials: Printed picture, lighting, wig, handmade adjustable pants, 10 performers

In this video I used a fake photograph of me, whereon a doll impersonated me, as a point of reference. I used 9 models, 8 women and 1 guy, who I arranged to look like 'me'. The final installation is accompanied by environmental sounds of the actual place. Each performance has a different length and order of actions, depending on the resemblance to the original. In these performances I’m pointing out the impossibility to alter the human body into a perfect resembling 

Image. 

Audition Audition discusses the format of auditioning. The idea for this
performance has been developed after my own experiences in auditioning as a
singer, where I was surprised with principles such as cold reading and improvisation techniques. As a performance artist, I am not familiar with these notions.
The script for this performance is based on sound and video recordings that were
made during my auditions for institutes and commercial companies that I auditioned for to gather materials for this performance. The performance discusses the format of
auditioning and the power relations of all parties that are present during an audition.
The audience will experience this as the performance is focused on the dialogue
rather than the visuals. The performance will take place in the dark and the stage
directions, usually only visible in the script, will be visible as a luminous text that is
scrolled by a machine with a peddle, that is pressed by one of the performers. The
stage directors who are usually in control of the audition are not visible, but their
comments are heard by the audience. The audience will experience an audition in
a scripted format where the emphasis is put on the absurdity of power relations
and the dialogue in between the different parties.

The work; Cover of Adele Rolling in The Deep Nichole337, is an installation that includes a video on a screen and handwritten music sheets on a stand. The installation refers to a video of a girl on YouTube that goes by the name; Nichole

337, and in particular to a video in where she does an acapella cover of ‘Rolling in the deep’ by Adele. The melody she sings is different from the original, because she sings out of tune and the rhythm is not stable but differentiates within the bars. I perceived her version of the song as an authentic production, because the original song was transformed while it was executed incorrectly. I notated 40 seconds of her, by ear in a new score.

The one of a kind score of Nichole 337, has the title; cover of Adele Rolling In The Deep acapella Nichole 337, with my name on the place where the name of the composer should be. The score only contains 40 seconds of the cover and is notated with black ink on see through Japanese paper. The notes are cramped in some bars and on some places they are smudged. The same is the case when looking at the lines of text.

In the video the artist rehearses the notated lines repeatedly. First with a webcam in a white room, later on the background, glasses, hairdo and movements of the original video are added to the sequence of rehearsals.

The video format changes according to the order in which the series is recorded, this means that every time a prior performance ends, another one will be added on in the column below. So the total sum of video’s moves up when there is no space left. First the cover of Nichole 337 is practiced, but at one point the original score of Adele is practiced to investigate the influence on the way it is sung when returning to the source material.

An important component in the process of translating any sounds is that the sound goes from body to body and mutates within every step. The appropriation of any work composed musically can therefore be considered as a new production instead of an uncreative action, on the condition that the outcome of this differs sonically and visually.

Pictures: Esmee Ottema

Day long performance, where toasties are served with a pully, generated around the image of the 50s housewive stereotype. 

The lyrics form a cynical and ironic comment on the magazine stereotypes from that period.

It's what I am doomed to do

Its what I am dommed to do

Is what I am doomed to do

Its how we were meant to be

Its how we were meant to be

How are we meant to be

I dont know

I dont know

Series of photographs

Materials: Handmade coat, wig, 1 perfomer

Registrations of performances in public space with the character Anybody.

Reenacting commen behavior depending on the specific place of encounter.

Collaborative project with icehockeyskater Rouel Hollander and artist Petra Berbee. 

Under construction

This video is a performance registration, based on a photograph of someone I don’t know as a starting point. In this work I investigate the meaning of photography and how whe use it to identify and express ourselves by exploiting is trough social media.

I looked for an impersonal photograph of a common event, such as a graduation ceremony and startled upon the Facebook page of young man. During this performance registration I reconstruct this still photo reality as it was captured in time. I’ve reconstructed every element of the photograph, by making use of the deformations according to the actual reality, such as a changed perspective or difference in scale. For example, I reconstructed the table as a vertical one and the pen in the video is a clay one that measures 2 times the size of the original one. At a certain point, the performance is accompanied by graduation sounds found in graduation clips on YouTube.

Video installation

For this video I reconstructed found Internet images, that were adds on a webpage on which you could sell your own hair. The video that includes 3 different performances of a single shot, collages all sorts of information that relate to hair; such as instructional video’s, written words, and pictures and sounds of video’s in where woman cut off their hair. 

In two of the referred images the women deliberately disfigured their appearances in the picture by photoshopping their faces. They appealed to me because of these deliberate disfigurements and because of the advertising text that was included. It said; ‘I am a single mom of a child with a disability. I often have to miss work for therapy sessions. I am selling my hair to help supplement income.’ To me, this woman who explained herself in this text and in the image, seemed to sacrifice a piece of herself by selling her hair. I tried to translate and reconstruct the actual picture by exaggerating its disturbed components.