PANOPTICON Trailer

Panopticon is Jordanova's meditation on unease, spies, jitters, and mechanics. Conceived before the events of 9/11. Jordanova melds experimental techniques with her classical training to create "surreal expressions of haunting beauty" that have become eerily more relevant day by day in this fast changing world. The performance is set in the context of spy cameras, audio sensors and prepared video.



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Acclaimed as "the wizards of New Music" the California E.A.R. Unit, is the ideal performing tour-de force for Panopticon. Extraordinary musicians, Dorothy Stone, flute, Robin Lorentze, electric violin, Amy Knoles, percussion, together with Jordanova, playing harp and harmonica, are melding music imagery of the score with live and prepared video imagery of artist Relja Penezic, using miniature spy cameras attached on the wrists, and bodies of other players and audio sensors.

The theatrical dimensions in this concert add to the atmosphere and feeling that in modern surveillance society Big Brother is becoming a Bother. Jordanova is widely known for her composition Requiem for Bosnia (CRI recording, Top-Ten Classical recordings in 1994 New York News Day) described by Tim Page as "haunting music for harp, tape and broken piano. Politics and music rarely combined with such felicity and dignity..." In Panopticon Jordanova addresses through music a situation that has moved to the forefront of social thought: how our desire and need for safety and certainty in our world, turns into control and the invasion of privacy.

This film is based on a live performance by Victoria Jordanova and California E.A.R. Unit at the Bing Theater (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) on November 25 2002. Panopticon is an interdisciplinary piece exploring Surveillance Society. Music, video, history, spy cameras, and audio sensors merge to address issues of privacy in contemporary society. Performers include California E.A.R. Unit, Victoria Jordanova, and Jeffery Atik. Written by Victoria Jordanova, Directed by Relja Penezic. Panopticon is distributed by Cinema Guild of New York.