Primordial SoupPrimordial Soup

The primordial soup contains the whole of creation: everything is present, but does not yet exist. In the primordial soup there is no distinction, no hierarchy and no components: everything flows into each another. Noise has strong similarities with the primordial soup in that it consists of an abundance of unordered information. When we are bombarded with information and are unable to distinguish a hierarchy, we experience noise. If you were to press down all the keys of a piano equally hard at the same time, all the possible chords would reverberate simultaneously and would therefore be indistinguishable from each other. A more extreme version of this is white noise, in which all the frequencies - and thus all the sounds - are equally loud. By 'de-creating', we undo the creation. We drop all concepts. Things no longer have names. Distinctions cease to exist. We can no longer see ourselves as separate from the world. Nothing is as it was, thus creating endless possibilities. Existing connections are broken, new ones can arise, but now with the realisation that connections are always artificial.

Gerjan Piksen is a composer and theatre maker. He is currently a 'discovery' fellow with the interdisciplinary theatre company Veenfabriek in Leiden, where he is developing his own performances and working on collective productions. He has also written the music for The Story of the Story by Jetse Batelaan, which was recently awarded the Silver Lion for theatre at the Venice Biennale and will be the opening production at the 47th International Theatre Festival in Venice.

"Things might look normal if you don't know the story behind it."