Julian Mendax Assange

Wikileaks Redacts


Michael Erik Griswold


with text by Craig Foltz

Instrumentation
Baritone voice
B-flat Clarinet
Viola
Electric Guitar

Performance Notes
The vocal part should be spoken, not sung (except in the improvisatory sections). The
notated pitches are purely meant to be a guide to the general inflection and contour.
The most important thing is to strive for a naturalistic delivery and to capture the
spirit and the rhythmic vitality of the text.

Program Notes
Mendax Redacts is a creative exploration of the world of Julian Assange and Wikileaks
(Mendax was Assanges hacker name in his early days in Australia).
The original text was created by my longtime collaborator Craig Foltz. Using
Jackson MacLows poem Insect Assassin as a model, Foltz fashioned an acrostic on
the names Assange and Wikileaks which evokes some of the central issues of his
work, while at the same time producing surprising and unexpected word
juxtapositions and rhythmic patterns. The piece alternates between carefully scored
sections in which music and text fuse together into a single line, and improvisatory
sections in which the performers are asked to respond to redacted documents as
graphic scores. Mendax Redacts was commissioned by and is dedicated to the New
York-Montreal Quartet: Thomas Buckner, Lori Freedman, Pemi Paull, and Tim
Brady.






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Mendax Redacts
2013 Erik Griswold
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"A dead man can't leak stuff. This guy's a traitor, a
treasonous, and he has broken every law of the United
States. The guy ought to be - And I'm not for the death
penalty, so if I'm not for the death penalty, there's only
one way to do it: illegally shoot the son of a bitch."
- Bob Bickel
Improv 1 - Tim's solo
Use the redacted document as a guide.
Tom: Let the improvisation develop, then recite the quotation below, sardonically
(including the attribution).
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"The cunning of Julian Assange's strategy is that he has made
everyone complicit in his own private decision to sabotage
U.S. foreign policy." - Christopher Hitchens
Improv 2 - Lori and Pemi's Duo
Use the redacted document as a guide.
Tom: Let the improvisation develop, then recite the quotation below, a little smugly
(including the attribution).
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"This is not justice; never could this be justice, the verdict
was ordained long ago...It is a public relations excercise, designed
to provide the government with an alibi for posterity. It is a show
of wasteful vengeance; a theatrical warning to people of conscience."
- Julian Assange
Improv 3 - All players!
Use the redacted document as a guide.
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