// Theorie

Wider das ausschliessliche Begreifen-Wollen in Kausalzusammenhängen – versteifen uns diese nicht schon deshalb, weil sie eine eindeutige Wirkrichtung festschreiben? (Zack, Kausalzusammenhang. Die Falle lauert nahezu immer und überall.)
Und für das Oszillieren zwischen Meditation und Stress als künstlerische Praxis.

Ich erlaube mir diese Textstelle aus Peter Sloterdijks „Der ästhetische Imperativ“ (I. KLANGWELT – Wo sind wir, wenn wir Musik hören?) aus seinem ursprünglichen Zusammenhang herauszuzerren und hier anzufügen:

„Will ich etwas begründen, beweisen, erreichen, so verzerrt dieser Vorsatz das hörende Verhältnis zu den aktuell mich durchziehenden Gedanken. „Ich denke“ dann bereits an etwas anderes als an den flüsternden Ton des gegenwärtigen Denkens. Ich wäre – wie Descartes – meinem Suchen nach Gründen in solchem Grade hörig, dass ich nicht bemerke, wie innere Stimmen, gegenwärtig gewiss, in mir arbeiten. Ehrgeiz macht taub – auch in der Erkenntnistheorie. Es scheint, als gäbe es zwischen konstruktiver Ambition und meditativer Aufmerksamkeit ein radikales Ausschließungsverhältnis. Wer konstruiert, hört sich nicht; wer es in sich klingen oder reden hört, kann nicht gleichzeitig konstruieren.“

Have you laid an egg today?

The Lump200 Band #3 @ Parachute Pony Studio, Berlin, March 2014.

Lump200: better disaster from rene desalmand on Vimeo.

This is a recovery track for Fatima. (If it is too exciting for you: listen to it later.)
(Sometimes things have to be in disorder to find into a new order. Provisorisch. Smartass.)
If you listen to the track on the computer speakers you probably will not hear the beat.

Life is a tale
Told by a Finn
Signifying anything

http://www.riittaikonen.com/projects/eyes-as-big-as-plates/

„Le miroir qui revient qui revient“ is a piece of radio art I composed and produced for Deutschlandradio Kultur in collaboration with Michael Wertmüller (drums) and Elektroakustisches Studio,  Akademie der Künste. It is going to be broadcasted on August 17th at 00:05 a.m. The piece takes 50 minutes and 18 secounds. Below you will find two extracts and parts of the concept.

„ […] toute réalité est indescriptible, et je le sais d’instinct : la conscience est structurée comme notre langage (et pour cause!), mais ni le monde ni l’inconscient; avec des mots et des phrases, je ne peux représenter ni ce que j’ai devant les yeux, ni ce qui se cache dans ma tête, ou dans mon sexe.“  Alain Robbe-Grillet: Le miroir qui revient

Le miroir qui revient

With „Le miroir qui revient“ Robbe-Grillet opens the genre of autobiography, he exposes memory as construction whose emphasis – compared to the memorized event or situation – shifts dreamlike. Fragments of memory differ in acuity, speculation and fiction breaks through. Attitude is reflected, Robbe-Grillet’s and the one of some close ones and some remote ones, in his familiy and in literature.
In „Le miroir qui revient“ the variations that have led to a kind of serial arrangements of scenes in Robbe-Grillet’s earlier work occur as variations of breaks. The broken material is like stranded goods fished out of the sea of percieved situations and aspects, only its combination reveals the subtext.

Le miroir qui revient qui revient

I suggest a composition of original tone and music that mirrors Robbe-Grillet’s composition of text layers and perspectives and that understands itself as a complement to the text. The text does not occur as language in the piece but as form and in forms and as a grid of links and breaks.

Can there be a similar relation between music and original tone like there is between fiction and perception? Can music reveal additional aspects of the ghosts Robbe-Grillet places in and around the Atlantic? Do that for the musicians have to dig in their own (musical) chasms?

Procedure, material, staff

A formal analysis of the text concerning its layers, their diffusion and the spread of the breaks is done. The record of these relations will provide the architecture for the musical and tonal score. Field recordings are done in the Bretagne and in the Jura – one rough main scene and one mossy and undulating side scene in the bio-/mythography. Both are border regions, once between solid and fluid and once between two countries (RG mentions a hotel that exactly is built on the frontier and where he spent some holidays when he was a child).
I will look for voices of the sea, voices of the landscape and voices of people who have a certain relatedness with locations and motifs appearing in the text. Some of those recordings will already be manipulated musically.

The original tone will be arranged according to the formal matrix of the text. Based on this arrangement as well as on RG’s motifs that have been translated into acoustics I will write instructions for drums and saxophone. Thereby the main focus remains on a versatile and permeable boundary between original tone and music: How and where can arise music from the field recordings? How must the algorithms for recording, improvising and playing be designed in order to vary the relation between music and original tone? Can music simulate the original tone?

Until this point I will be in charge of all work. Michael Wertmüller joins me and we record drums and saxophone in the electroacoustic studio of the Akademie der Künste. Michael plays the drums and I play the saxophone.

etc.

The entire piece can be heard @ sonoshpere.

Das Wetter ist ein blöder Stinksäckel.
Das ist ein Messwert und keine Theorie.

Wäre ein Tun, je mehr Aufmerksamkeit es erhält, desto besser, müsste man Stockhausen recht geben, der die Anschläge vom 11. September als das grösste Kunstwerk bezeichnet hat.

Der Refrain geht so:
Es gibt keinen Zusammenhang zwischen erreichter Aufmerksamkeit und Qualität.

Staatliche Subventionstechniker dürfen den Refrain jeden Morgen auf dem Arbeitsweg singen. Eine Strophe könnte so gehen:
Es gibt gute erfolgreiche Arbeit.
Es gibt gute erfolglose Arbeit.
Es gibt schlechte erfolglose Arbeit.
Es gbit schlechte erfolgreiche Arbeit.

Wer das Thema vertiefen will, lese z. B. Black Swan von Nassim Nicholas Taleb oder Fachliteratur zu Public Relation.

I am in Africa for the first time. Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Coucil, provides a residency in southern Africa. For the first two weeks I play the saxophone in the band for the multimedia show 3 colours. The piece has been commissioned for the opening of the 4th World Summit on Arts and Culture in Johannesburg. Brett Bailey is the director, Mapumba Cilombo the musical director – he turns out to be the best band leader I have ever worked with. The saxophone is quite a strange ingredience in the traditional african music that builds the acoustic surroundings for the piece.

3 colours reveals the usual difficulties of theatre. The music has to be adapted for the choreographies, the piece looses its tempo. And more problematic: there is a realistic raping scene that stays the only scene where the public (so called cultural specialists from all over the world) laughs.
The refrain goes like this: If you show unbroken violence on stage the piece of art turns into a piece of violence.

Nevertheless, it was a splendid experience to share stage and time with excellent musicians from all over Africa. Some days after the show I travel to Maputo where the 2nd part of the residency will take place. Read on here.