On the evening of Thursday, Nov. 7, Professor Nadav Assor and Daniel Davidovsky performed their collaboration, Tunneling, to a small audience of Connecticut College students and professors in Myers Studio. Before the piece began – before even Professor of Dance and Chair of the Dance Department David Dorfman introduced the event that was about to take place – the room alone stimulated the senses, creating a sort of pressure like being underwater and in outer space at the same time. As the spectators filed in, waves of static sounds washed over the studio, intersected by faint beeping like a distant car alarm. The noises emanating from the speakers intermingled with the hushed chatter of the curious audience, warping the soundscape; the thud of a bag hitting the floor from two rows away seemed to echo thunderously, while whispers from friends nearby went unheard.
Dim bulbs illuminated two wokstations on stage; luminous islands on separate sides of the otherwise dark studio. On the left was a table and cart loaded with power tools, hammers and chisels, a laptop, knives and more. A vacuum sat idly to the side. Beneath the table shone a bright green sheet that appeared to glow in the faint light, while a video camera was mounted above, facing the wooden surface of the table itself. Clad in a dark blue jumpsuit, Professor of Expanded Media Nadav Assor of the Studio Art Department approached the station, accompanied by Alem Bukvich ’16.
Experimental sound artist Daniel Davidovsky, Conn’s Dayton Artist in Residence, manned the rightmost station, which was crowded with wires and somewhat outdated sound recording equipment (and a laptop, too). A native of Tel Aviv, Israel, Davidovsky describes his work as an exploration of “the connections between improvisational routine the development of performing tools, creating a unique improvisational language in music and sound.” Between the two performers – Assor (assisted by Bukvich) on the left and Davidovsky on the right – a video feed from the camera mounted on Assor’s table was projected on the wall behind them.
And suddenly, the piece had begun. Assor used a power drill to drill through the wooden surface of his table, spilling sawdust and debris onto the green screen below, which was immediately swept up by Bukvich. Assor repeated this motion several times, picking each site of incision with extreme deliberation but, congruently, with no apparent order or reason. Throughout the performance, audience members were prompted to choose between watching Assor, Davidovsky or the projection behind them. As Professor of Philosophy Simon Feldman pointed out later during a question and answer session with the artists, though the audience could see Assor performing his work, the projection felt more comfortable to view; the footage was focused and framed, unlike the hectic unpredictable reality of Assor’s actions.
As Assor worked, the sounds of his labor were edited and transformed by Davidovsky. The sound of drilling resonated with unearthly reverberations; the scraping of Bukvich’s broom became the rattling of shakers, providing a beat to which the artists’ performance seemed to mold to. “The final sound is unexpected. You never know – that’s the way I like it,” explained Davidovsky after. “I look at the image and compose with him [Assor].”
The room was pierced with the sound of serrated metal on wood as Assor began to saw through his table, breaking away chunks of the surface at a time. As the chroma key screen beneath was revealed, its acid green was replaced with the brown and black stitching of a tweed jacket. Assor then brought over a panel matching the jacket and began to unbutton it; on the projector, the unbuttoning of the jacket revealed a familiar but unrecognizable face beneath. The jacket was then re-buttoned by Assor then slashed away at to reveal the fleshy, fuzzy pink of fiberglass insulation. Assor then retrieved a rectangular panel layered with the insulation itself, and began to dig through that material, too, cutting and pulling away at it in an almost surgical manner. Subsequent layers included strips of fabric, bricks and dead leaves, all of which the artist chopped, hacked and swept away at to reveal a green screen layer underneath, onto which the next layer was projected. All the while, Davidovsky sculpted the sounds produced by Assor’s actions, organizing a cacophony of sounds into an otherworldly symphony.
Though Assor tackled each layer individually, Davidovsky manipulated the footage so that the last 30 seconds of Assor’s interactions with each previous layer played simultaneously alongside real-time footage. Each layer enclosed its proceeding layer, too, providing the “tunneling” effect implied by the performance’s title (in the corner of the projection was looped footage of a man staring out at the audience, occasionally turning to peer down the “tunnel.”)
I found the transition periods between layers to be especially provocative and perplexing. As Professor Feldman mentioned, watching the work progress on the projection was in many ways more comfortable than observing Assor’s actions at his workstation. However, when Assor would break finally break, bend or tear his way through a layer, a moment of suspended reality would follow in which the footage on the projector would break off into a 30-second loop, diverging from Assor’s real-time actions.
In this instance, a blinking red bicycle light awaited our arrival at the end of the tunnel, but Assor assured us that the ending is different each time. Though the performance itself seemed unearthly and hypnotic, the concepts surrounding the piece are firmly grounded in real-world events. Assor explained that the idea of “tunneling” came from news surrounding a post-modern philosopher who was working with the Israeli army to apply his viewpoint to military tactics. Specifically, this philosopher looked to justify the Napoleonic tactic of tunneling; in this case, tunneling through people’s walls in refugee camps as a way of infiltration. Assor and Davidovsky sought to embody this concept in their work. “The violence was real,” Assor said, referring to his destruction of each layer. However, these moments of absolute demolition were contrasted with gentler moments, or, in Assor’s words, “moments of painting.”
“Technology is about this dig,” Assor went on. “You dig for something. You always try to see into materials, buildings, people. In psychology too. This is the most physical way I can do it without actually inflicting.”
Tunneling is different each time it is enacted. “Usually we perform it with people walking around us,” Assor said. Davidovsky also mentioned that the two artists are typically stationed closer to one another, which facilitates easier communication between the two. This is not to say that the Connecticut College performance was wrong by any stretch; on the contrary, the set up of this rendition is part of its unique identity as a performance, as much as the sounds sculpted by Daniel Davidovsky and the layers created – and destroyed – by Nadav Assor.
