Accessible,accumulated avant-garde

‘A GIG of this nature is not a chore. It may be an obligation. It is, most certainly, a great entertainment,” says Daniel Figgis of Snakes and Ladders, a mini-festival of music, visual art and soundwork art.

Broadly speaking, Snakes and Ladders is an avant-garde exposition that visits the National Concert Hall and Wexford Opera House in November, before moving on to the Symphony Space venue on New York’s Broadway next January.

It’s perhaps the biggest collection of Irish avant-garde work ever assembled in one space. Figgis though, like most sensible people, bridles a bit at the use of the troubling term “avant-garde” and prefers to call the show “19 new works in a variety of media: live performance, video and pure soundworks. It’s a unique set of cross-disciplinary collaborations, provocations and agitations.”

The musicians include Roger Doyle and Brian O’hUiginn; Michael Boran and Jenny Brady are among the artists and the soundscapes feature works by The Jimmy Cake and Sunken Foal.

“I like to feel that this festival caters to an audience interested in the very accessible face of contemporary music from piano recital through free-improvisation to avant-folk, from rock to electronic,” says Figgis.

“Is it ‘avant-garde’? Define that term and you’ll find ‘the advance group in any field’. That’ll do me. The presentation of the events as a multi-layered continuum is reflective of the fact that an Irish avant-garde, of which I see scant historical record, has been with us for a long time and it can and does move forward. It feels to me that the most avant-garde gesture we can make is to excite people again, which is why this show feels a lot more like a club event than a concert.”

For a long time now, the fortysomething Figgis has been happily dancing around the fringes of contemporary music and refusing to acknowledge the existence of musical boundaries. From Ranelagh, in Dublin, he joined the punk art group The Virgin Prunes in the late 1970s while he was a student of philosophy at Trinity College Dublin. Bandmates included Gavin Friday and the artist Guggi. Before that, he was a child actor of some renown, having worked with Peter O’Toole and Jenny Agutter.

In the Prunes, he was known as Haa Lackaa Bintti; later, he was known as Princess Tinymeat, before reverting back to his real name when he signed to the prestigious Rough Trade record label in London and releasing the well-received Skipperalbum.

Over the years, he’s been a curator, a composer and a visual artist but he clearly reserves most of his enthusiasm for a type of music that is as challenging as it can be rewarding. Though hardly a mainstream presence, he would be a name in the new/neo-classical/avant-garde music world. When someone working at New York’s World Financial Centre heard his Skipper album, Figgis was asked to curate and perform in a night of “cutting-edge” Irish music. The links he made in New York and the reaction to his work are the reason the Snakes and Ladders festival travels to Broadway next year.

"As a festival narrative, going from the National Concert Hall, through the Wexford Opera House and on to Symphony Space on Broadway, it seems Snakes and Ladders is closer to The X Factorthan your standard art/music experience," he says. "I hope I am adequately conveying the energy and ambition behind this work. The show seems to reflect a certain enervation that I sense in the culture. Reinvigorating and reinstating the 'Beautiful' is a privilege at any time – if that doesn't sound too pompous."

His work with and in support of Irish avant-garde music led the Arts Council to ask him this year to contribute to its package for the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts (et al) when it was lobbying for continuing Government funding of the arts. Others involved included author Sebastian Barry and fiddle player Tommy Peoples.

IN THE ARTS COUNCILdocument, Figgis writes: "I am of a mind that art ennobles and enables one to fulfil one's part of the social contract. Artistic activity is not a get-out clause. Its practitioners should, like any other service provider, be paid a wage that is consonant with value. With Arts Council backing, it has been possible for me to commission a wide variety of unique new works, both musical and visual, from across an extraordinary spectrum of arts workers – some 19 new works in all."

Immediately following the Snakes and Ladders concert in Wexford, a soundwork he has created for the venue, Auditorium, opens.

"It's very specific to the particular opera house space," he says. "The idea is to focus on a core function of this fantastic new building – to explore the fact that the building is, in essence, a sounding space. Auditoriumis a work purely for the ear. We are hearing, in a very mediated and artificial way, 'what the room heard' – a kind of sonic reflux.

“A group of recordings were made with students from the Wexford campus of IT Carlow some weeks back. Sounds naturally occurring within the room were archived. I then recomposed them so that the room will seem to harmonise with and ‘sing’ to itself.”

“Well, that’s the theory, at any rate. I’m actually working on a final mix at the moment and while the piece started with what you might regard as a kind of ambient intent it is now beginning to sound like the room is devouring itself! This is a Wexford Opera House commission and I’m rather flattered in that they don’t exactly make a habit of that sort of thing. It is also a public art outreach gesture, which I find very refreshing and imaginative”.

Hearing of the type of work he was doing, the nearby Whites Hotel in Wexford asked him to record a piece very similar in process but different in delivery for its Tranquility Spa. “Anyone who has ever visited a spa will share my horror at the New Age dross traditionally piped into such spaces,” he says. “Whites have very kindly invited me to redesign their spa sound environment. No more tinkly winkly nonsense . . .”

Snakes and Ladders — an Entertainment is at the National Concert Hall (Kevin Barry Room) on Friday, November 13 and Wexford Opera House on November 14. The New York Symphony Suite show takes place on January 8 next year. The soundscape Auditoriumis at the O'Reilly Theatre, Wexford Opera House, on November 16 and 17, from 12pm to 2pm. See danielfiggis.com for more information