Étude for Athlète, Soprano and Viola

interlude – a Balancing exercise

Part 1 Gymnasts

Part 2 Kung-Fu

Part 3 Basket ball

I have been involved on the orgnaisation of various nights throughout the years, and my latest veture is a a bi-monthly music and sound art event named You See Art / I See Clay, which tag line reads ‘A night dedicated to the rethinking and expansion of the normative paradigms of perceptual relativity’. This seemingly supercilious, yet sardonic statement which targets directly the pompous and pedantic attitude of some actors within the art world, somehow also denotes the personnel objective I have with this project as well as a central issue for anyone involved in a creative practice; namely, the eternal ‘what is art’ debate. The issue however is commonly associated with visual arts and the likes of Duchamp’s urinal or Giacometti’s sculptures, but scarcely addressed in relation to audio creation. From Luigi Russolo to the Dada or Fluxus movements, sound has been a common medium for artist, yet it seems to me that it is regarded by most people as a secondary vehicle; and my aim, along with other promoters/curators in London, is to foreground audio artists in this city and to create a space where they can display/diffuse their pieces.

Retromania: pop culture’s addiction to its own past – simon reynolds

Although Simon Reynold’s latest opus came out a few month ago, I have only decided to review it now for two reason. First, it has just been translated in French and I know a few follower of this page originate, as I do, from the gallic land and; and the other rather mundane fact that I have just finished it.

In the late 80s, in the pages of Melody Maker, the author hymned a return of sorts to a certain aesthetic state that only a resurgent rock, then widely ridiculed, could only provide; and if if his work of the subsequent decade and a half seemed wholly oriented to machined and danceable futures, exemplified the in his 1988 book Energy Flash, the period culminated to his unprecedentedly thorough study of post-punk Rip It Up And Start Again in 1995. That book, that I cannot recommend enough, now reads like a guide to nostalgia of its own decade as much as a tribute to the music its author had been too young to write about first time around.

As Reynold’s rightly notes, the spectre of nostalgia has been harrying pop culture almost since the years of its post-war acceleration, and certainly since the 1960s; but Retromania could only have been written now, in the wave of the decade that has seen musical culture regress to a state of utter sterility. His own term is hysperstatis: a condition of hectic antiquarianism in which TV pundits mock- ridicule their teenage tastes, revered artists and bands curate their own legends into box set and (inevitably repeated) one-off performance of their one great album, and consumers dither between online archive and new music that sound like the B side of a record made in 1981.

Blank mass rising

BLACK MASS RISING movie (Official Trailer) from shazzula on Vimeo.

Video film maker, photographer and musician Shazzula‘s latest creation is an attempt to stage her version of a black mass using images and music from both the Witch House (arguably using satanic iconography ironically) and Black Metal (not so sure) scenes. Shot entirely on her mobile phone at various locations throughout Europe, the two hours epic strives to be as visually and sonically unsettling as the title suggests.

In the first part of the film, the hellfire imagery of boiling lava, obsidian obelisks and blackened sun is accompanied by a sympathetically charged symphonic drone by Master Musician Of Bukkake, while further along work by Makoto Kawabata, Sylvester Anfang II and Mater Suspiria Vision send more shuddering sonic shadows skimming through the kaleidoscopic footage of ritualistic preparation and hallucinogenic dream weaving.

The second section is where Shazzula’s more disturbing imagery rears up, particularly with her shot of two dead looking girls, weaving tresses of hair are looped backward to create an eerie effect. Equally morbid is her gothic cinematic reproduction of Ophelia, accompanied by the industrial feedback blast of French avant-guarde metal band Aluk Todolo. Throughout the film, visual and music collide together and produce a result that is both uncanny and magical; although occasionally slightly contrived.

aural contract – the freedom of speech itself

The Showroom, 1 February — 17 March 2012

Lawrence Abu Hamdan examines the politics of listening through an ongoing project on the role of the voice in law as part of the research project Aural Contract, commissioned as part of the gallery’s participatory programme Communal Knowledge constituted by a series of events, publications, performances, exhibitions, interviews, compositions and workshops Aural Contract . Throughout the project Abu Hamdan has built up a sound archive, containing audio extracts of his works together with specific moments of juridical listening and speaking gathered from a wide range of sources such as the trials of Saddam Hussein and Judas Priest, UK police evidence tapes, films such as Decoder (which features the likes of Genesis P-orridge, blixa bargeld and william burroughs) and readings from texts including Italo Calvino’s A King Listens.

The centrepiece of the exhibition is a large rectangular table, covered with a blue fleece cloth and surrounded by chairs. The table is empty aside a computer screen, and an intriguing set of yellow and red light apposed next to it. Visitors are invited to seat down, put on a pair of headphones and watch the screen, which read Milosevic’s sex change: Excerpt from the ICTY trial of Milosevic, in which he was dubbed by a female translator, also here witnesses a present at the trial discuss the consequences of this . The screen does not display anything except those words, and an audio excerpt of the described trial is played through the headphones. After a few minutes of immersion into this fragment of a crucial episode of international justice and democracy, the text and the recording both fade away and is replace by a tape loop a roaring lion, MGM films trademarks opening, which, we are notified, was the first non musical sound to be copyright protected.

The piece is constituted of over 40 recordings of various audio material gleaned around a wide spectrum of medium and events, sometimes humorous, others tragic, and often both. The exhibition engages with the idea of non visual communication in relation to totalitarism, either corporate or political; with a particular emphasis on second hand testimony and reported accounts, alternating from the point of view of the audience, the power, and even the technician, as the light bulbs I described earlier, which were used in Nuremberg’s trial in order to facilitate interpretors task.

THE ATTACK OF THE RADIOPHONIC WOMEN: HOW SYNTHESIZERS CRACKED MUSIC GLASS CEILING Part 2

A Portrait of Eliane Radigue (2009) from Maxime Guitton on Vimeo.

Elian Radigue‘s has been making music since the 1950’s but truly started using synthesizer as a medium in the 1970’s, gaining recognition from a wide spectrum of what we could designate in retrospect as sub cultural enthusiast. She worked for a year at New York University’s electronic music center where she collaborated with synth pioneers and avant guarde musician such as Rhys Chatham or Morton Subotnick, but went into retreat in 1975 after becoming a Tibetan Buddhist and abandoned composing.

When she returned in 1979, she resumed her work almost where she had left it, the aesthetic was still minimalist, or even ascetic. She still used her ARP 2500 (of which less than a 100 units remains) and cassette tapes to create long and sustained notes. The results was still of impecable precision and tones emerged from unexpected spaces, coalescing into unique modes of barely perceptible changes that distort the listener’s perception of time

Now 81, she is still active, but almost exclusively focuses on acoustic instrument, and if you are interested in furthering your knowledge of both her music and persona, the French directress Anais Prosaic has recently completed a portait of the composer which she is currently presenting in various music and film festivals.

THE ATTACK OF THE RADIOPHONIC WOMEN: HOW SYNTHESIZERS CRACKED MUSIC GLASS CEILING

Oramics: Atlantis Anew from The Wire Magazine on Vimeo.

“Wee have also Sound-Houses, wher wee practise and demonstrate all Sounds, and their Generation. Wee have Harmonies which you have not, of Quarter-Sounds and lesser Slides of Sounds. Diverse Instruments of Musick likewise to you unknowne, some sweeter than any you have; Together with Bells and Rings that are dainty and sweet. Wee represent Small Sounds as Great and Deepe; Likewise Great Sounds, Extenuate and Sharpe; Wee make diverse Tremblings and Warblings of Sounds, which in their Originall are Entire. Wee represent and imitate all Articulate Sounds and Letters, and the Voices and Notes of Beasts and Birds. Wee have certaine Helps, which sett to the Eare doe further the Hearing greatly. Wee have also diverse Strange and Artificiall Eccho’s, Reflecting the Voice many times, and as it were Tossing it; And some that give back the Voice Lowder then it came, some Shriller, and some Deeper; Yea, some rendring the Voice, Differing in the Letters or Articulate Sound, from that they receyve. Wee have also meanes to convey Sounds in Trunks and Pipes, in strange Lines, and Distances.” – Francis Bacon, 1624

Benedict Drew

ZABLUDOWICZ Gallery, 12 January–5 February

As part of their ‘invites’ series showcasing UK-based artists who are not currently represented by a UK gallery, the ZABLUDOWICZ in north London gallery featured this month Benedict Drew, an artist whose practice is mediated through in video, performance, film, music and text with central concern for the exploration of our relationship with technology, authority and control.

When I walked into the installation space, a feeling of oppression instantly overwhelmed me; I had entered an unknown space yet I was the one who felt obtruded upon, as if something had trespassed my own boundaries. First there are spasmodic flickering lights, like a light bulb fusing, and projected onto the back wall are visuals evoking scenes from the Big Brother title sequence. Close-ups of eyes and camera lenses then turn to billowing artificial smoke, which becomes an engrossing sequence of low-fi animation. Now that we have now advanced far beyond many of the fantasies of early ‘science-fiction’, we hanker after that Land before Time – for the comfort and familiarity of clunky, basic machines.

This exhibition has now unfortunately ended, however the video featured above gives a particularly interesting insight into her work and if you liked it, Benedict Drew, will also present a solo project at Cell Project Space in London this spring (9 April–27 May 2012).You can also read an interview of the artist on the gallery’s website.

Roy Harper: The Magpie Index

London Matt’s Gallery, 18 January–12 February

The Magpie Index is a single-screen high-definition video artwork by artist Richard Grayson, focusing on legendary singer-songwriter Roy Harper. The musician delivers a series of monologues to camera. Each section addresses a different aspect of his work, his philosophy and history, covering the counter-culture; religion and superstition; ornithology; nature and the environment; political dissent of course the music world.

His work and approaches are resolutely idiosyncratic and informed by a strong personal and ethical vision. He has used his songs and writings to propose alternative histories of culture, launch attacks on establishment positions and to critique social, political and religious operations.The work moves from the biographical into the social and cultural spheres to present this individual voice in ways that allude to the traditions of the radical non-conformist, the visionary and the outsider, transcending the musical work of the artist and the established discourse on counter-culture.

The Magpie Index extends Grayson’s interest in alternative and heterodox understandings, the operations of belief and unorthodox modellings of the world and its histories, and his focus on the sites of culture and music as places where subjective readings and understandings are translated into wider societal and political spheres that will be of interest for both those familiar with his work, but also anyone interested in a particularly insightful alternative vision on 1960s now mythological dissented voices.

Janek Piotrowski: Soft Machine

Soft Machine / Jarek Piotrowksi, Lars Korb, Ayumi Sawa from GALERIE8 on Vimeo.

London GALLERY8, 20 January–11 March.

Using William Burroughs’ novel The Soft Machine as a point of reference, the artist represents the various assault bodies are confronted to within the realm of human experience through painting, cut-outs, avant garde music and even live performance. Drawing on the infamous cut-up technique developed by the writer, Piotrowski explores themes of religion, science and sociology using images taken from unreferenced analog archives sources rearanged, distorted and finally remediated so far remove from their original meaning taxonomy is rendered futile.

Employing perhaps the most mundane medium imaginable, meticulously scalpel-cut PVC matting, the artist creates proto-religious patterns that brilliantly echo the politicised surrealism of the book, conceptually very much comparable to the Naked Lunch’s film adaptation. Medical books, sacred scriptures and pop culture images collide on the red, white and grey flooring surface in a phantasmagorial yet compelling manner in which meaning is created through juxtaposition both inside and outside the pieces.

On the opening of the exhibition, the audience was granted with a collaborative performance of Japanese musician Ayumi Sawa and German musician Lars Korb that used light, shadow, sound, projection and smoke to construct a multi-sensorial experience. The artist, concealed behind a curtain and reduced to shadows melted amongst patterned forms projected onto the veil, played exotic instruments such as tibetan bells as well as polyphonic space like synthesisers in order to build layers of meditative sounds that filled the room and the bodies; and intensified the liturgic dimension of the installation.