10 min read 🤓

Three days of residency at Les Ateliers Claus, Brussels: Diktat, unPublic, Radio Panik, and another couple of ookoi-clones.

august 20, 2023

A few months ago we had this wonderful chance to finally bring back to—matter of speaking—life: the mighty Diktat. Some of you will wonder indeed: what has happened to Jean Bordé? As a matter of fact, so do we; and I will happily go into more detail on this, any time you and I meet in real life. Here though, on these public pages (obviously, despite their minor interest for dealers in worldly and monetary affairs, under programmed (data) surveillance by many a greedy online actor, let's not fool ourselves), I feel I must hush.

As an artistic endeavor relatively obscure, devoid of financial backing, lacking grants, publicity, capital, and fees (for various genuine, not solely idealistic motives), and with each participant leading busy lives scattered over considerable distances, it has never been easy to come together and play.

And obviously corona days didn't help.

It was little before corona that I met Shih-wen Lee, one evening late January 2020 at the opening of a visual arts exhibition in a Parisian galery, of works by Yuu Lin and Olon Huang, curated by a former student of mine, Cecilia Yue Teng. Shih-wen there performed. On her double bass, using a Max MSP patch. Or Pure Data, I can't remember. Whatever, we got talking, and I invited her to join us for an unPublic session.

Which so happened. We met for the 65th unPublic on February 22nd 2020, in La Générale's Salle Pleyel, which actually was the very first unPublic in the new La Générale, in the 14th arrondissement, where the collective had moved to at the end of 2019 (the 64th unPublic was the last one to be at the old place on the avenue Parmentier, you can imagine it as part of the soundtrack to La G's displacement). We were also joined by another fine Paris based Taiwanese artist, Chiwei Lin. I had met Chiwei in Taiwan in 2017, in Tainan, when at the Ting Shuo hear say Studio we did the 39th unPublic. For some reason I forgot, Chiwei did not participate in that Taiwanese unPublic. But he did then, in Paris.

Meeting Shih-wen was a fun and musically really satisfying chance encounter, and we would have all gladly have gotten together more often here and there to play. But then corona burst, and more so, Shih-wen, who up till then had been studying at the Paris conservatory, moved to Brussels to continue her studies at the Royal Conservatory there.

When in last year's—2022—summer we trained to Berlin to join Jeff Zeromoon there for a couple of days, we tried, though knew the 'no' pretty much sure beforehand, to maybe do it as a with-Jean Diktat. While in Berlin, with Rinus we arranged for him to come over to Paris for a short autumn residency at La Générale. Which then of course would have provided a perfect chance for that 42th Diktat performance, following the series of 41 that had started on the 7th of April 2006, in Montmartre, before came to something of a grinding halt in 2018.

But also autumn 2022 did not allow for a with-Jean Diktat in Paris.

Because there can be no Diktat without a double bass player, in came Shih-wen Lee. You may call it the 'concept', I'd rather call it the 'law', haha. Or say, it began as a 'concept', but then became a law.

(Conceptual music, like (other/all) conceptual (visual) art, says German music philosopher Harry Lehmann, can be recognised by identifying/verifiyng the existence of an isomorphism between the 'concept(ion)' of the work and its 'percept(ion)': what you read is what you hear.)

The idea indeed was obvious: we'd propose Shih-wen to join Diktat. And do that 42nd—number dear to 20th century pop culture—performance in Brussels, where we all then met with Rinus from Berlin. In May 2023.

Frans Claus was so kind as to make things easy from a practical point of view. I contacted him, told what was the plan, and he generously proposed me a three day residency in the Ateliers Claus's studio space, precisely on the days that we needed the space to work. Three days from May 11th till the 14th, including the possibility of a quasi-private, but still public presentation there on Friday evening May 12th. Of cours that I jumped at the occasion. Thank you so much once again, Frans!

Those three days have given rise to four memorable events. Being able to use the studio space offered obviously a fine occasion for unPublic sessions. There were two of them.

We recorded the 93rd one as a trio, with Maurice Charles Jj on sopranino sax—Remember À Table!? There's this amazing album we recorded at the Brussel's Pianofabriek, still waiting to be released, as this one is meant to be on vinyl—(again, the first life meeting with Jean-Jacques since confinement! ...), Shih-wen on the double bass and myself, in the afternoon of Thursday May 11th.

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The next day we re-vived Diktat...

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... in what, as said, was to become, according to the 'count' on the quartet's web page, Diktat's 42nd performance since its inception in 2006 on the seventh of April, in the long time already no longer existing Project 101, a cellar space below a small shop in Montmartre that at the time was run by radio-artists Dinahbird and Jean-Philippe Renoult. Seventeen years ago, and a good as any reason also for the summarising essay dedicated to Diktat in the 175th issue of Gonzo (Circus) Magazine (that, of course is in Dutch).

We added a 43rd to the list the next day: one of that Saturday evening's acts that were to perform at Les Ateliers, in the hall below the studio, had canceled, and Frans invited us to step in. And we did. A brief hand-held intervention on the 'dance floor'...

After the 43rd Diktat performance, we moved back up to the first floor and into the studio, for the final event of our three days at the Atelier: the 94th unPublic. We were joined by three of Shih-wen friends, all like her studying at the Brussels conservatory, and all from Taiwan. There were percussionist Hui-Chi Li, pianist David Sung (as there was no piano, David also did percussion, together with Hui-Chi), and Hung Shao-Huan, playing the sheng and using his voice. Additionally, we were joined by a friend of Rinus', Marcin Barski from Poland. In the recordings you will hear Rinus reading in Dutch from Simon Carmiggelt's short story 'Vreemdeling in Jeruzalem', and Rébus from the French translation of South Korean-born philosopher and cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han's 'Lob der Erde: Eine Reise in den Garten'

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Diktat, unPublic... unquestionably fundamental and cornerstones of our creative endeavors over the past decade(s), one might say. As is the ookoi. They are sort of a trinity. A trinity that ordered according to seniority would run like: ookoi, Diktat, unPublic. Now, as far as the ookoi are concerned, Petermans is not much of traveler. He rather is and always has been the homely, seclusive, retired kind, and I pretty much knew beforehand that there would be little chance that he would make the trip down to Brussels, to join there in some of the work. But! We did manage to get our tails down there (thank you, Vieze Meisje!) ... You see them in the pictures, solitary dangling in the back of the Ateliers' studio...

... and yes, wrapping another couple of ookoi clones! They may well be with us more often in not so distant futures. As all the while the men once clad in green, continue to write their b.ookoi...

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During the residency, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Nico Bogaerts, for his Moacrealsloa emission on Radio Panik. Nico made it into a thing of epic length, near to two hours. Here it is as an embedded podcast. For your pleasure... (It is in French)

A long and relaxed conversation, or rather of a series of mono-logues. I tell a lot, which makes it a useful document for myself. Some of the things that I said (en français): Je suis un jamais retraité; || fin des années 1970 j'arrivais à Amsterdam, je voulais faire des études, mais je n'arrive pas, il y avait trop d'autres choses à faire || (: ultra / young lions :) je pense toujours que dans la courte période qu'on a fait, c'était d'une grande originalité; peut-être quelque chose qu'on arrive à avoir une fois dans ce vie ... discours sur les cassettes trouvées || ... Ultra ... || l'histoire de 'Commuters' || ... Koenig ...|| Maths || ... c'est le son qui fait la musique ... || ... 'Chronique Sonore' ... || 'c'est quoi la musique ?', il n'y a pas de reponse générale, tout le monde a sa propre musique ... pour moi, la musique c'est quelque chose qui se construit dans ta tête, c'est en écoutant que se fait la musique || pour moi la musique commence au moment où je commence à écouter musicalement || ... 'BruxellesGC' ... || Le Placard, rencontre avec Emmanuel || ... rencontre Rinus van Alebeek, Maastricht - Heerlen ... || la naissance de Diktat ... || ... si on se mets sur ne scène, on devient tout de suite les Ronnettes ... || je suis devenu un grand propagandiste de faire de la musique sans public ... || ... ( :diktat:) on est des danseurs ! on danse autour de la basse ! ... comme instant, il y a cette idée ce qu'on fait avec diktat, on joue avec notre collection de cassettes trouvées, des choses qui sont enregistrées par nous mêmes, qui sont trouvées dans la rue et on utilise ça d'une façon en réagissant l'un à l'autre, mais on sait jamais ce qui va venir, parce que tout est imprévisible, les instruments sont imprévisibles, parce qu'ils ne marchent pas très bien, ou ils ne font pas ce'on pense ils vont faire, et ça c'est une sorte d'une grande pièce de musique, une seule pièce de musique, Diktat, qui tourne autour ces lignes de contrebasse, qui se ballade avec, ou avant, ou derrière. Et c'est contrebasse est essentielle là dedans || pas de Jean, mais Shih-wen ; elle n'est pas Jean Bordé, mais elle n'est pas besoin d'être Jean Bordé, elle doit être Shih-wen Lee! || on le voit surtout comme des petits extraits d'un truc qui continue, alors l'idée de faire un disque, ça ne colle pas vraiment || ... ( :unPublic: ) ... Emmanuel et moi c'est une sorte de centre || ... avec ou sans publique, ce n'est pas la même intention, ce n'est pas la même chose, c'est différent || 'd'où vient ta fascination pour la musique ?' moment d'illumination, j'avais 13 ans peut-être, au lycée, un garçon qui était une classe au dessus de moi m'avait invité chez lui, et qui m'a fait écouter Hot Rats, de Frank Zappa, on écoutait Peaches en Regalia ... et là je me suis dit, "Dieu, ça peut être quelque chose, la musique" ... || 'Tu écoutes quelle type de musique actuellement ?' || ... Surtout unPublic ... mais j'écoute aussi beaucoup d'autres choses au fait, mais—et c'est peut-être aussi un peu l'époque—après souvent je ne sais plus ce que c'était au fait. Il y a absolument, peut-être pas tout très originale, mais il y a des musiques absolument fabuleux, une énorme quantité ... il y a 50 ans, on avait encore l'impression qu'on pourrait connaître tout ... c'est la quantité qui est effrayante... mais il y plus que jamais de la musique intéressante, et la peine à écouter ... || ... Hendrix - Star Spangled Banner ... »

{{Playlist: Harold Schellinx - Kitty Knew ; Harold Schellinx, Ronald Heiloo - A Twilight Smile ; [[Minny Pops]] ; Commuters: The Ventriloquist, The Acrobat, The Young Lieutenant, The Man on the Island ; Diktat - Sonic Circuits, Volkspaleis ; unPublic - uP 154, uP 483.}}

We are but our stories.
They will all be forgotten, eventually.
We write to forget.

Thank you, Nico!

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tags: unPublic, Diktat, Ateliers Claus, ookoi

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