Ars Poetica

A dynamic collaborative project between composer Douglas Boyce, poet Marlanda Dekine, and the chamber ensemble counter)induction, Ars Poetica is a boundary-breaking muso-poetic work for poet and chamber ensemble.

The texts for the piece will be built from a long poem Marlanda has been crafting since 2018, drawing from the author’s cultural and biological roots and their process of making. The text will surface insights into the powers of being itself: into the gift of spiritual technologies which defy any terrifying ‘thrown-ness’ of subjugation, technologies that speak to us through wonder and the world-transforming action of art.

At the same time, Ars Poetica is a piece of chamber music, a continuous, single-movement of shifting textures, harmonies, and instruments. Composed for guitar and poet, this work integrates spoken poetry, composed and improvised music, virtuosic performativity, and a subtle choreography of the players and the poet. Over the course of the piece, voice and instruments will couple and de-couple, compete and support, seeking solitude, and craving unity.

Ars Poetica seeks that which is forgotten, connecting us as artists first, through forgotten practices, strategies of being destroyed by time and savagery: Griot and jongleur; poet and player. Ars Poetica is a ritual in action, an aural and rhetorical architecture for spoken embodiment, a shifting and mobile performative space in which musicking and poeting play together. A sharing of the strange beauty of these words and sounds to the multiple communities we hope to reach.

We will broaden the impact of the project by performing the work in non-traditional spaces, like libraries, bookstores, and churches, and beyond these performances, recording and sharing each performance and the responses of audiences. As the piece is refined, we will also make a ‘proper’ recording with counter)induction, Marlanda, and Douglas spending two days at Oktaven Audio in New York. The act of recording is itself another ritual which we will document, recording short interviews with the performers, and engineers, in addition to high-quality audio and video work.