AUDIOLOGY

• Glasgow Herald

• ‘How the Politeness of Pacitti Hides A Deep and Glacial Anger’

• Mary Brennan, 4th November 2004

Howard Hughes and Joan of Arc seem an unlikely double-act. But the curious part played in their demise by sounds, real or imagined, has been whispering "make a piece about this" to Robert Pacitti for years now. His work, however, took him in other directions: Australia, Brazil, Mexico - the London-based performer/ director, whose company has a reputation for brilliantly untoward, unsettling work, has been globe-trotting on behalf of the British Council. He has headed up workshops with local artists, given lectures and shown his own productions.

However, he laughs at the notion of him flying some kind of flag for British performance.

Flags - Union flags, to be precise - were the reason Geek, the previous show he brought to Glasgow back in the early nineties, came to an abrupt halt in Nottingham. Pacitti chose not to enter into any public whing-ding with the press, who had engineered displays of outrage. Instead, he took Geek out of circulation and declined all interviews.

"I had a real opportunity to play a kind of 'wild child' trump card," he says. "But I knew that had only limited value, so I deliberately sidestepped the controversy. It was, absolutely, the right call to make. It was dignified and I'm proud of that. I think I've learned, over the years, that to wear a tie and be smiling, with an outstretched hand, gets me further than chucking bricks. I've been using different tactics. I think you'll see that in Audiology - it's terribly polite.”

Don't mistake "polite" for anodyne or disengaged from topical issues. Pacitti is as het up as ever over questions of who truly wields the power in our daily lives. He says: "Audiology asks who has power and is it because we let them have it? If you tell someone a piece of information, and it then becomes shared, have you, in fact, given something away. Something that can be used or abused. Audiology is about hearing as a mechanism, how we do - or don't - communicate, and what it means to have an exchange, a heart to heart."

Alongside songs written by Pacitti, there's a score by Max Richter that proves Pacitti's point about the power of sound as an influence. He came across Richter's music by chance, was so caught up by it that he turned detective and tracked him down.

In the past, the emotion at the forefront of Pacitti's work was anger, loud and clear. Has that gone? Not a bit of it. "The work has changed. I'm chasing something very formal that's to do with issues of beauty and aesthetics. The rage is now glacial - and if you engage with Audiology, I think you'll see something that is really, really angry in there."