Thresholds - for String Trio, Percussion, and Video

Conducted by Taylor Brook and performed by Tenth Intervention, May 5th, 2017 at National Sawdust in Brooklyn, New York.

"Thresholds" uses Jan de Bont's 1994 action film "Speed" to explore themes of late-capitalism and climate catastrophe. Today, we are held hostage by the pursuit of economic security, increasingly working more grueling hours for fewer wages, with this process perpetuating the inevitability of climate catastrophe. Perhaps a comparison could be made with the process outlined above and the plot of "Speed," in which a domestic terrorist arms a city bus with an explosive programmed to detonate if the speed of the bus drops below 50 miles per hour. The explosive device forces the bus to drive faster and faster, holding on to the shallow hope of survival despite the inevitability of the vehicle running out of fuel.

"Thresholds" remixes sped-up clips from the film "Speed" and asks performers to play in synchrony with the fast-paced fragments of the video as the work becomes increasingly more arduous and strenuous to process.