modernités recyclées

november 22, 2006.

Again with ana-R, we spent the weekend of october 28th in Lille, where in the afternoon of sunday 29th we animated a circuit bending workshop. Or, to be more precise, it were Rébus, FlexRex, Cosmo and David S. that did the bending, while I sat among them, diligently disentangling clods of cassette tapes, as I jumped at the occasion to get ahead with my work on the found tapes exhibition. All part of a whole series of events, interventions and installations in the wonderful Maison Folie Moulins, which are going under the heading 'Les modernités recyclées' and that in turn are part of the Lille 3000 festival.

The main theme of this three month festival is ... India ... indian culture, cinema, arts ... Walking around Lille, on saturday afternoon, we found the avenue de Faidherbe lined with twelve giant elephant statues, each eight meters high, by Bollywood decor artist Nitin Desai. A curious sight, to say the least ...

So why India? ...

I'm afraid I have not the slightest idea. But then on the other hand: why not? ... Maybe one should not ask these things ... There's fun and fine things to hear and see in Lille, these months, and it's good to see all the fine places and initiatives that managed to pop up and get started there at the occasion of Lille's being 'european capital of culture' in 2004 continue ...

We arrived early saturday afternoon, and walked around Lille for a couple of hours. Of course I hoped to be able to pick up some tape clods ... and we did come across, but only, one ... That was not far from the station, in the gutter of the rue du professeur Calmette, just opposite the Institut Pasteur ... (#394, part of exhibit 72)

The bending workshop was a great success. And as for my work on the found tapes, while telling and explaining visitors about what I was doing, I managed to disentangle and rewind most of the tape material for acquisitions #60 and #61.
Regrettably, as so often at similar occasions, I did not find the time to properly have a look at many of the other things going around at la Maison Folie that weekend, with the exception of al1 & ant1's installations. I did twist the knobs of their so fine looking controls (see for example the 'TDK box' above). It sounded good as well, even though most of us were somewhat disappointed in learning that all that sounded was purely digital ...

Had a conversation also with their Hurl-o-mate, incorporating some, well let's say Eliza-like, algorithms ... Great fun, but also a way of compiling an amazing library of screams ... ( * ) ... I did not manage though to undergo one of Thierry Madiot's massages sonores, and even forgot to quickly make a tour at the first floor, to see and hear the hindu chanting machine that was on show there ( ** ) ...

Rébus did though. He also recorded it. You can hear it at the beginning of his short sound reportage of ana-R's circuitage weekend ... ...

[ Lille 3000 continues until january 14th, 2007 ]

notes __ ::
(*) I remember having read something along these lines in the Amsterdam Weekly, sometime this summer if I remember rightly, about an artist touring Holland with a set-up to record people's screams ... As al1 & ant1 assured me not having been to Holland with their Hurl-o-matic it was not them ... I'll try to find out what that was about. [ ^ ]

(**) Which reminds me of the nice package I recently got from the Amitabha Buddhist Society in Sunnyvale (Amitabha is the Buddha of infinite light and infinite life), containing a little booklet, a double CD and ... a copy of the blue Amituofo chanting player of which there is a picture in the entry on chanting boxes. The blue chanting player plays two 'pure land chants' (looped from the recordings that each take one of the two CDs): Amituofo and Namo Amituofo ,,, That was a nice surprise. Thank you so much! (* Amituofo *) ... [ ^ ]

t'oo_deep, or not t'oo_deep ?

november 21, 2006.

Couple of weeks ago already, that ana-R contributed to the evening - friday october 27th - in support of the coeurs purs and their la Machinante in Montreuil ... A very colorful event. How could it be otherwise in a such colorful place?

Among the highlights let me mention Thomas Sundholm's 'sonic cycling'; the wiring and amplification of Didier's 2CV (he started the motor, and ran it in the cour, but soon had to turn it off again, to avoid the performance space filing up with poisonous 2cv exhaust gases); the - absolutely hilarious, a must see ! - film that FlexRex compiled of the coeurs purs' pure dada vacuum cleaner concert (on friday 22 september this year) in the rue de la Seine and the rue des Beaux Arts in Paris; and french beat poet Julien Blaine's poetic ramblings which - to my pleasure and surprise - rendered sadly shallow most of the digital Max and other patches' vocal distortions that were to sound at other times that evening ...

The coeurs purs mêmes transformed, with lots of tomato juice and eggs, their nuptial bed, in order to chase from there (and everywhere) the phantoms of Oedipe ...

In their very own words: "Combattre les fantômes de l’Oedipe qui nous enferment, nous empêchent de vivre, d’aimer, nous poussent au crime, et que stimulent tous les organes patriarcaux tels l'Etat, la religion, la psychanalyse, les inventeurs de la société de consommation, les inventeurs de la société du spectacle" ... Were they trying to kill their Fraud (their Fraud) ? ... And would not that au contraire be but a very oedipal act, as Thomas observed ?...

"T'oo_deep or not t'oo_deep ?", that seemed to be the question ...

The answer, I'd say, is as simple: it was yes ! ...

[ Earlier related SB-entry: "In your ball, sir, I see fertility ...!" ]