Meredith Monk\u2019s groundbreaking performance work, <\/span>16 Millimeter Earrings,<\/span><\/i> was a seamless integration of live performance, objects, film, vocal and instrumental music, movement, text, recorded sound, and light. It marked several, notable \u201cfirsts\u201d for Monk: thinking of sound as an overall environment, working with her voice<\/span> and visual images as primary elements, creating a full sound score, and incorporating film into a live work. The piece was a breakthrough in her quest to discover a visual\/sonic\/poetic performance form that could weave together multiple modes of perception. Responding to the original performances in 1966, art critic John Perrault wrote in the <\/span>Village Voice<\/span><\/i>, \u201c<\/span>Images, movement, film, words and sounds in Miss Monk\u2019s new work are so skillfully interwoven and inter-related that no description can substitute for the kind of magic that she has managed to produce. The whole stage is her canvas and she uses every bit of it. <\/span>16 Millimeter Earrings <\/span><\/i>has to do with surfaces, all seen as if through glass or reflected in a mirror. The surface of the human body. The surface of the erotic and the emotional. The radical juxtaposition of apparently contradictory surfaces- film, flesh, colors, and sound- becomes a witty method of deliberation and deliverance, and of complete art.”<\/span><\/p>\n
Music, direction, costumes, film and objects by <\/span>Meredith Monk <\/b>Cinematography: <\/span>Kenneth van Sickle <\/b>Performed by <\/span>Meredith Monk<\/b><\/p>\n
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<\/b><\/b>16 Millimeter Earrings <\/span><\/i>premiered at the Judson Memorial Church in New York City on December 5th and 6th, 1966, <\/span>with subsequent performances in January 1967 at Hunter College, May 1967 at The Village Theatre, and February 1969 at Billy Rose Theatre, a division of the New York Public Library.<\/span><\/p>\n
FILM:<\/strong><\/p>\n
The film version of <\/span>16 Millimeter Earrings <\/span><\/i>by Robert Withers documents a 1977 reconstruction of the original performance. While Withers\u2019 filmic interpretation rearranges Monk\u2019s soundtrack, thus creating a different juxtaposition of sound and image from the original, it nevertheless captures the essence of this pivotal work\u2014 a prototype for interdisciplinary art. <\/span> Meredith Monk and Robert Withers, <\/strong>1966\/1977, USA, color\/black and white, sound, 25 minutes, 16 mm.<\/p>\n
Excerpt from<\/em> 16 Millimeter Earrings film (1977)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n
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