Nouveautés de la rentrée ... :: Our dutch and flemish viewers, may now learn almost all there is to know about ookoi's chef-d'oeuvre "1024" (which meanwhile continues to premiere - here, there, everywhere ...) in the sept. - oct. 2008 issue (# 88) of Gonzo (circus), 'tweemaandelijks onafhankelijk toonafgevend tijdschrift over vernieuwende muziek en cultuur' ...
You find Robert Muis' interview "Zelfcomponerende klankstukken" on pages 56/57 ... :
"'1024' is wat het is: een schijf die in je dvd-speler, op je eigen tv, een wereld opent die doet wat kunst kan doen: je op een andere gedachte brengen. Beter of niet, maar anders hoe dan ook ..."
Otherwise : ookoi's new website - ookoi.nl - is under construction, and we are currently preparing our contribution to the soundtrack of dutch film maker Dick Tuinder's upcoming 'road movie' "Winterland".
Two of ookoi's very own movie-clips, l'Ecoute and the brand new 2525 (produced during our recent 'Razende Bol' residency on the island of Ameland as a present for Rob Scholte on the occasion of his 50th birthday) will be featured on the upcoming 30th edition of the Noordelijk Filmfestival in the very northern parts of the Netherlands ... more soon ... stay tuned ...

Psycho/Geo/Conflux in Brooklyn, NY __i.

(( /conflux 2007/ --> [ @ 9/11 ] [ _one. ] [ _two. ] || [ found ] ))

september 14, 2008.

" [ ... ] snatch your rattling last breaths
with deep-sea-diver sounds,
and the flowers bloom like madness [ ... ] "
( * )

I still remember vividly one late gray and stormy summer morning in the early 1990s. I was working at the University Paris VII at the time, and had surfaced from the parisian underground at the Place Jussieu, to cross the large open square of the Jussieu Campus.
It was windy, very windy.
I braced myself, struggling diagonally towards the Tour 45-55. Classes had not yet started, so the place was deserted. I saw but two backpacked youngsters, that appeared to have taken shelter from the heavy wind near the entrance to my 'tour'. They were consulting a map, discussing. The one and the other in turn pointed in different directions. When I passed them, I stopped and asked whether they were looking for something, and if maybe I could help? They shook their heads, and told me that that wasn't necessary. They were, the tallest of the two told me, only attempting to orient themselves. "We know where we are ... just need to decide in which direction to continue our visit." He smiled. From their accents I gathered that they were italians. Good luck to you and with that, then, I replied. And as I turned to enter the 'tour', I took a look at their map.

They were holding a street plan of Budapest.

A year ago I flew to New York for the Conflux festival, that, back then, took place in the Williamsburg neighborhood, in Brooklyn NY. Right now - from september 11th till 14th - this year's edition (the fifth) of the annual New York festival dedicated to contemporary psychogeography is taking place. This time around its headquarters is located in Greenwich Village. I had a wonderful time at Conflux last year, and I sure would have liked to be there again. But as I am not, let me - finally ! - report on all that I did at Conflux last year, and so still participate a bit ...

It was my encounter some fifteen years ago with the two backpacked italians on the Jussieu Campus, visiting Paris guided by a street plan of the city of Budapest that introduced me to the ideas and practice of the situationists.
I was reminded of that chance meeting when taking part in Sander Veenhof's project - SL Walkie Talkie Walks - during the Conflux 2007 festival. At heart it consisted in a variation on the classic situationist 'mapping strategy' ... Sander mapped the area of Williamsburg around the Conflux 2007 Headquarters (the The Change You Want To See gallery, roughly on the corner of Havemeyer Street and Metropolitan Avenue) onto a 'dutch section' in Second Life (the '0031 area'). He conceived a means of communication between cell phone browsers and SL Walkie Talkies. In the picture you see Har$ Hefferman holding a such Walkie Talkie during one of Sander's Conflux 'walks', in the afternoon of september 14th, 2007. While I was sitting in the crepuscular interior of the Luna Lounge, steering my Hefferman around the virtual rendering of a couple of examples of typical dutch architecture, I exchanged text-messages with Alexis, who at that very moment was walking outside through sunny Williamsburg, typing messages on the screen of a cell phone ...

Here's what that looked like :

WT: A participant of the Conflux festival in NY will connect to you trough this walkie talkie to join you for a simultaneous walk trough SL and Brooklyn! Let the New Yorker guide you, he or she has a combined map of SL and Brooklyn and will tell you where to go. While walking, stay in touch and share your experiences! Have a nice walk!
WT: Hars Hefferman now carrying a SL Walkie Talkie.
WT: ... waiting for someone IRL to connect to you.
WT: ... connected to 'alexis'
WT: alexis (NY): What are you looking at now?
WT: alexis (NY): At Hope people washing street. We feel like our heads are always down looking at keypad.
Violetta LeShelle: Hars is walking with alexis.
You: Hey alexis, maybe one should not bother to much about looking around. I think the walk is in your head ...
WT: Sending your text now to the connected walkie talkie in NY!
You: I am walking in the countryside
WT: alexis (NY): At corner, we can actually see a church in the distance.
WT: alexis (NY): what does it look like?
You: Are you almost at the beach?
You: It's nice and green here.
WT: Reminder: walkie talkie is active and still connected to a walkie talkie in New York!
WT: alexis (NY): We're going to the town square
You: I'm over at the lighthouse now
WT: alexis (IRL) has quit the talk
Connected
WT: waiting for new IRL connection...

It is an interesting idea, and as you may gather from Sander's website, he has since his presentation at Conflux last year been further developing this concept and technique of communication between real and virtual world locations. But then there in Williamsburg, even though it was surely an achievement to simply have the text chat-connection between the outside and second life to function, a worthwhile communication using these short sms-like messages would have asked an awful lot of concentration from both the real and second life walker. It is not easy to create an 'experience' from within your 'mirror-world' for your partner on the other side, and vice versa. But of course it's not impossible.

I had come to Conflux to pick up and map the cast away audio tapes that I hoped to come across while randomly wandering around during what turned out to be a sunny late summer week. Here's a Google satellite pic of part of New York, with indications of what I picked up and flew back with to Paris on september 17th, 2007 ...

Together these finds form the 87th acquisition of the Found Tapes Exhibition, and the fifth in our series of 'limited cassette edition' cassettes: Found in Brooklyn, NY.

As you can see in the picture, though most of the finds are situated in the Greenpoint area of Brooklyn, two of them are definitely not: they are on the other side of the Bay, in New Jersey. That's because for the (too) short period of time that I flew over to the USA to participate in the Conflux festival, I stayed in Jersey City. There I enjoyed the hospitality and friendship of Joshua Bisset and Laura Quattrocchi. Joshua and Laura are movement artists (dancers, choreographers). Together they run the Shua Group. Much of their work is about interaction. Their (dance) works are in general made for specific sites, and are often performed outside, in public space; like the Intersection Play, which Shua Group did as part of Conflux 2007.

The intersection of Shua Group's play was that of Metropolitan Avenue and Union Avenue, with on the north-east corner 'El Moderno' (mexican style food), on the south-east corner a liquor store, on the south-west corner a Kellog's Diner, and on the north-west corner - the one you see in the picture to the right (click to enlarge) - there is a small green spot with some benches where one can sit on. Conflux participants were invited to come and view the play (which was done on three consecutive days, each play lasting for precisely one hour, but starting at a different time). They were also invited to join it ("as you understand its logic.").

Imagine a busy, but not too busy, Brooklyn intersection. Passers-by continuously cross the streets, in one of the 8 possible senses. They stop, wait for the signal to turn green. And then they walk ... They are on their way to work. Or returning home from work. Walking the dog. They go shopping, see friends. Crossing to get to the subway, or buy liquor. All of them on their way to some end ... Then imagine a group of people occupying that same intersection. They look just like all the others. But unlike the others, they are not on their way to somewhere or something. They are just there to cross. Or they wait and stand around. Some of them change their mind half way. And return to the pavement where they just parted from. Others suddenly walk backwards ... They trans-form the 'atmosphere' of the intersection, in an interesting and subtle way. Many people sense that there is something out of the ordinary, but it is difficult to pinpoint. What is part of the play, and what is not?
"Something is going on here ... This is w-e-i-r-d ...," I heard one woman whisper into her cell phone, while looking suspiciously at the people surrounding her...

Here's the five minute 'mobile noise' u-Tube that I shot with my cell phone, while participating in the Intersection Play on saturday september 15th, 2007, from 2h30 till 3h30 ...

- next: The Speed of Things -

[ Earlier related SB-entry: New York @ 9/11 ]

notes __ ::
(*) From the lyrics of Aqualung. Do you know / remember this classic rock track by Jethro Tull ? I came across parts of it on a very badly worn bit of cassette tape on the corner of Wythe Avenue and N11th Street. Apart from the highly degraded sound of the Tull track, there's a couple of strange other sound-bytes on the tape bit, which made me wonder whether maybe this came from a cassette of someone's having a go at remixing Aqualung ... [ ^ ]

tags: found tapes, psychogeography, Brooklyn, cassettes, New York, Conflux, movement

# .274.