Archive

During: Compliment is a sound–based performance that challenges the idea that live performance involves seeing the performer’s body. In the first iteration, Before:Compliment, presented in London as part of the Robert Institute of Art’s Live Art Commissions in March 2022, Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom invited a string trio to play an improvised musical arrangement. The musicians were hidden within a booth with only their feet visible. Through a discreet live video feed of the entire space, the musicians responded to the movement and gestures of the audience as they entered the room, creating a heightened relationship between audience and performers. The improvisation was led by a key – written by both the artist and cellist/co-director of Apartment House, Anton Lukoszevieze – with reference to a spectrum of film scores.

In this new version at the Fruitmarket, Boakye-Yiadom layered the piece, building on the structures laid out in the first performance. A new group of Scotland-based musicians (double bass, piano, drums, flute and saxophone), again mostly hidden from view of the audience, played a new improvised arrangement in response to a recording of the music from the original performance. This presentation was accompanied by video recordings from Before: Compliment giving the audience a chance to see this build-up of relationships and how the musicians improvise within the original structure.

Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom was born and lives and works in London. Working across multimedia installation and performance, combining ready-made objects, sculpture, photography, sound, archive and self-produced moving image to create installations with multi-layered references, highlighting plurality and cultural collision. Incorporating snippets of film footage and fragments of sound into works, as well as collaborating with musicians and sound artists for live improvisations.

Performers:

Rick Bamford, drums
Steve Kettley, flute and saxophone George Kypredimos, piano
Armin Sturm, double bass

During: Compliment was commissioned by the Roberts Institute of Art as part of its Live Art Commissions and co-presented by the Roberts Institute of Art and the Fruitmarket.

Images: Chris Scott