Appetising sound bites

Performance art comes to the supermarket this weekend and books editor MARGIE THOMSON will be one of those exercising her vocal chords in the aisles.

Squeeze Me Honey, spread me on to your toast", or "Watties, established 1934" are not the usual lyrics accompanying beautiful music, but it's surprising just how lovely the text of a product label can seem when it has received the Wolters-Dross treatment.

Michael Wolters and Marcus Dross are German artists visiting Auckland to perform their work Product Placement. They will be supported by 30 locals, who include choristers from Viva Voce, the Auckland Choral Society, and the Gals, and closet exhibitionists prepared to come out of the shower and into ... Woolworths, Grey Lynn.

It's not your usual music venue but then neither are the thousands of products your usual muses.

Shoppers at this Auckland supermarket are used to selecting goods to the compelling beat of Madonna or the Spice Girls, but on Saturday the ambience will be somewhat rarer, although if video footage of stagings in German supermarkets is anything to go by, rather gigglier.

Those 30 locals have each selected one product and given the packaging to Wolters and Dross. They took every bit of text off the label and turned it into a variation on Orlando Gibbons' 1575 Cries of London, in which he set the cries of the market-sellers to music.

Each song is tailored to the singer's voice and experience - be they soprano, alto, tenor, bass, or whether they prefer chanting in one pitch or singing a more complicated song ranging up to six pitches - and the rhythms of the text.

It's not as simple as it sounds. Making music of "If you are not completely satisfied contact Heinz Wattie's consumer support team, PO Box 439, Hastings" requires a great deal of skill in the composition and in the singing. Believe me, as that line comes from my own song, Wattie's Baked Beans, sung in four pitches and extending over a chastening three pages of musical manuscript.

While you might think the impetus for such a performance is born of a kind of consumer cynicism - a protest, even, at the domination of our lives by branded products - Wolters and Dross are not driven by such sentiments. It's simply a piece of theatre which itself "explains the supermarket as a theatre space. In a way, going shopping in a supermarket is a perfect performance - no one can fail," Dross says.

The chosen products are simply catalysts. The singers will sit quietly near their product until a shopper reaches out for the item At that point, the singer will burst into song, establishing a relationship with the shopper on the basis that they have both selected the same product from among all the many available, Wolters says.

Wolters and Dross met at the Institute of Applied Theatre Studies at the University of Giessen and have collaborated on a variety of music-based performances. Dross lives now in Dusseldorf while Wolters has moved to Birmingham where he is studying for his PhD in composition.

They are in Auckland as part of the annual "pp" exhibition series, and an exhibition documenting Product Placement can also be viewed just up the road from the supermarket in a private studio at 175 Richmond Rd.

Singers will be at their product-stations all Saturday afternoon, but every half hour they'll gather for a harmonious rendition of a graceful six-pitch, four-part assurance that "as you touch one of our chosen products we start to sing".

* Product Placement will be performed this Saturday, November 17, at Woolworths supermarket in Richmond Rd, Grey Lynn, between noon and 5 pm.