Black & White Transcending Partiture [2008]

Video projection 7:00 min loop syncronized with 2 partitures/scripts on music stands, black
satin curtain that covers the walls of the room, 6 framed images of MJ, 6 candles, smoke. The video is juxtaposed with
the written partiture, that can be performed by two black and white dressed performers (see "Black & White Performance"
under performances). When you walk into the room, the satin curtain and the lights create a theatrical atmosphere.

The 6 chapters are references to MJ´s records as we know them from popular culture, the accumulation of a personal,
publicly portrayed transformation, juxtaposed in a dialogue with other transformative narratives such as the history of
the record company Motown, that moved beyond the boundaries of black and white music, Frantz Fanon´s postcolonial
essay Black Skin White Masks, meditation on dissolvement, and Gregorio Allegri´s holy mass, that is performed with
shadow choirs, two choirs in front of each other. The translation of the other, of signs and image is the function of this
partiture, or more so, the untranslatability of experience, hence the various mystic references and performative elements
hidden in the partiture. A narrative to be understood or experienced through time and the presence of multible objects.

”..It Don´t Matter If You´re Black or White”  Michael Jackson sings in the song of the same name from 1991
– a sentence that somewhat is a contradiction, having in mind the King of Pop´s own transformation from Motown
childhood star to white popmusic icon. The psychopathology of colonialism, mysticism, Motown og classical
composition music are some of the elements in Jette Hye Jin Mortensens "Black & White Transcending Partiture",
that together makes a hybrid partiture, questioning the dichotomy in this postulated contradiction.

With references to Gregorio Allegri´s  classical choir piece Miserére, Frantz Fanon and Michael Jackson´s iconic
songs and self-staging, a dialogue is set up between a mystic, unnamed voice and the King of Pop, performed by
two black and white performers.

Through the songs, the connotations of the black/white dichotomi is put in front of us as well as the complexity that
exists between these two extremes.

Text by Nanna De Hemmer Widding