mutek 2003 -.[1].- the rollercoaster breaches the drop ..

["tobias c. van Veen" <tobias@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

[for those intrigued, http://www.mutek.ca has streaming webcasts .. ]

.. mutek is massive now; the strain is showing in all aspects, as many a
journalist repeats a now bewildered mantra: 'what, I cannot get into the
show? .. 'where is my press pass..?' --- all those things that, no doubt &
in this tight-knit community, should not be repeated in public
circumstances: but fuck all that, I'm here to write, not act as an extended
mouthpiece for an organisation that despite its goodwill needs to remember,
from time to time, the people who supported it from its inception.

so: day one, and mutek shifts from last year's SAT--which is sadly being
moved, the old building torn down--to the Juste Pour Rire studio, a
two-level comedy club with indoor balcony. not exactly the floor-level
experience of the SAT with its 360 degree 1 foot stage; the
audience-performer dichotomy is unfortunately reinforced, and the only plac=
e
where Mutek begins to feel itself again is ex-centris, albeit an ex-centris
show with such packed seating--all on the floor, although kudos this time
around for the floor mats!--that the space is beginning to show its strain
as well. this year is the breaking point--either new venues are found, or
simultaneous events will begin to appear on mutek's roster. the panels this
year are vastly improved, if not exhausting, and although a bit hastily
organised, have provided valuable information, dialogue and discussion.
attempting to yell at people over beats or drones is never the best way to
network or even meet people--I am horrible at it, despicable, even--and the
panels provide a chance to actually meet and talk with artists, labels,
promoters, and find out people's interests and projects. in fact, I should
be at such a panel right now, but forgetting my press pass in the heat of
the moment this morning, running out the door at full speed to catch a
breakfast appointment on 3.5 hours sleep only to find the vancouver-seattle
posse still snoring after imbibing far, far too much green, white, and
booze, made me pull a reverse tango back to grab the pass and where I
decided to begin sketching down a few notes taken while surveying the
response at last night's shows ..

So; the big question was: Thomas Koener! but before we arrived at the
industrial drone master, the two previous ex-centris performances deserve
severe mention. montr=E9al's christop mignon delivered a video-performance
piece that displayed an acute sense of detail, attention to concept, and
rigorous execution. three videos side-by-side on the screen displayed, on
the left, a man (can't see his eyes) holding his mouth open. next over, a
man with trying to suck through a massive block of ice, held in his hands,
with a tomato in the middle, and finally, what appeared to be a bridge at
dusk as it slowly moved through sunset to night. audio was recorded from
these actions... the tension, groaning and breathing of the open-mouth; the
cold slice-slurping of the ice, the choking; the traffic and far off
drones... it all came out different amplifier-speakers which were then
mic'ed and fed into a central mixing console, electro-acoustic style, where
christop sat in the middle of the audience. a performance of tension... it
ended 45 minutes later, the audio undulating from these live recordings in
time with the video, a whole aural field of bodily tensions, of excruciatin=
g
pain, of endurance, a meditative torture, which only produced audible relie=
f
in the audience when the tomato was reached, 45 minutes later, in the middl=
e
of the ice.. then, presumably christoph, finally closed his mouth, coughing
and spluttering from viciously holding his jaw open for so long.. three
quarters of an hour that was an eternity .. I could only think of the
illegal US captives in Guatanomo Bay, held in masks, forced to kneel for
hours at a time. a painful temporality, the audience sighed finally when th=
e
tomato was almost choked, bitten, swallowed, regurgitated .. I felt it in m=
y
stomach, as it almost heaved .. then the end; an audible applause that was
nonetheless muted as the audience recovered from shock.
performance-art-sound, or audio art or sound or conceptual art has never
gone over well at mutek, in fact the very first performance ever was
alexander st. onge in 2000; he and martin tetreault related to me one night
at casa the boos that resulted from alexander's body-sound conceptual piece
that fine evening .. three years later, and the audience make-up has also
changed somewhat: far less producers sitting and listening to each other,
more of a "crowd," but also the same lukewarm enthusiasm. last year's
response was by far the best, to stephen mathieu and janek schaeffer, for
example, while this year reminds me of 2001 .. half-asleep?

in any case, edmonton's Clinker took over the reins with a delightful drone=
,
hum, tone and loop performance that shook the very foundations of daniel
langois' multi-million dollar, state-of-the-art & postmodern designed
masterpiece, so perfect that during the quiet points we could hear the
kitchen staff in the restaurant. I guess after throwing down a billion
dollars for the super-chrome-glass rolling-entrance, circular doorway with
cog wheels they forgot lead sound insulation. c'est la vie, and don't get m=
e
started on doing construction in quebec ... clinker, however, took it in
stride and responded with moments of the purest bliss; I "fell into it," so
to speak, losing all thoughts to the hums and strains that retained a
classical edge but an avant-garde composition--no glitches, granulation, or
high frequency pitch-shifting here--thinking of what it must have been like=
,
when I could think well enough, to have heard La Monte Young "back in the
day," ie the '60s ...

and then thomas koener and his mentor, an older man known as asmus
tietchens, perhaps the grand-daddy of german drones who goes back to the
'60s, and who played cds while thomas munched down the laptop. I think it's
fair to say that we ALL fell into this one, as the still-life tableaux of
tietchens and koner manipulated us farther and farther into koner's dark,
post-industrial drones, eventually opening our ears to buried sound streams=
,
repetitions and events that could only be heard after significant immersion=
..
the end of the performance was, perhaps ironically, one of the superior
moments; the volume reduced, the bass rumble dominated the atmosphere, as i=
t
slowly decreased, and then ended, the audience was perfectly quiet and stil=
l
[a singular cough was heard, but by then it was over]. if only they had don=
e
that in the middle, the aural attention of the dazing bodies could have bee=
n
directed to an even deeper aspect of listening. after the frustration of
entering the event, and finally finding a seat in front of a speaker, I cam=
e
out feeling as if I had gone through two hours of meditation, and I smiled,
and felt like I was talking softly. this didn't last, as we headed off to
the busy confusion and packed sweat of the Studio, but nonetheless the
impact was profound, and whether the audience was clapping for Koner and
tietchens or the whole night, the response to the performance finale was
enthusiastic, finally, finally ...

and then Studio, to telefon tel aviv and their knobby-twisting antics,
cut-wrapping drum n bass and breakbeats... pole took the stage and surprise=
d
me -- after all the speculation as to his "new direction" -- to hear a
progression from his crackles to his abstract broken-dub. dub has truly
entered a new sphere with pole--including live keyboards, very nice--and
when MC Fat Jon (who, I should also mention, as it intrigues me, was one of
few black people at mutek .. I commented on the skin divide last year
between mutek and DEMF, and won't return to it here, except to note it
hasn't changed...), anyways, when Fat Jon took the mix, he threw out a few
non-rhyming, fast and abstract--if not surreal--verses that, once betke and
jon get their live timing down, and perhaps, as ben nevile and colin the
mole noted, a bit more high end tweaking, then there will be some serious
conflagration between a post-dub minimalism of electronic schemas remixed
with a post-jazzy, Tribe (if not Anti-Pop) influenced wordstream ..

then Deadbeat, who hands down shook the room with monster bass, throwing
down a beatiful and EPIC dub-reggae set that, although it never hit the 4/4
and confused the skinny pale whities as to how to dance to it, threw the
floor into shakedown .. deadbeat's production, timing, breakdowns, and
patterns were among the best I've ever heard. after hearing him since his
first demos, his music has come so far that it is a pleasure experiencing
the artistic development of a truly friendly and wonderful .. well, "young
man" .. (so many of us are young men, eh?) ..

which has me thinking: the panels were good this year, well laid out, and
recorded--so they should be archived, at which point y'all can critique me
on moderating the first one. but the question I have is: where were the
women? although women performers--[sic], aka jen morris.. or I should say,
performer[]--are performing, the lack of women, any women at all, on the
panels is disturbing. what needs to be addressed and created more than ever
is a panel on gender.. where was montreal's studio xx? the work of anna
friz, perhaps, or others? hell .. let's bring over terre thaemlitz and open
all the questions as to gender, but certainly the issue of women cannot be
ignored here.

otherwise, and perhaps not surprisingly, mutek took the chance to toot its
own horn with the panel on int'l festivals, with long sections devoted to
mutek.cl, the chilean component. alain mongeau's dedication to creating
bidirectional exchanges must be commended, though; his idea of a network of
festivals, and of making sure that local artists in other locales are given
the exposure and the treatment and the artistic exchange as the "big star
foreigners" rang true in my years, as say compared to the int'l touring of
UK prog house DJs or whomever, who simply visit, DJ, collect pay and boot
out. if mutek and other arts organisations are to create long lasting
artistic (and which amounts to social) change, then dialogues must be
developed, encounters created, contexts appreciated. basically its a
practical implentation of hospitality to the other, and of a micropolitics
of sonic context. Pol Taylor, although a bit over-enthusiastic about
mutek.cl as the director of the south american component, made it clear tha=
t
the festival was not a simple transfer of mutek montreal to the south .. it
must form a different content, and create a different form altogether,
working around the region's weaknesses [distance, size, wealth] and with it=
s
strengths [high-tech sector, loose laws, available spaces, artists]. with
the affable taylor in charge, this will hopefully provide a counterpoint
somewhat for the friction that still surrounds mutek montreal, and despite
its inclusion this year of electro-acoustic & noise bad-boys No Type, still
manages to create a certain aura of exclusivity and elitism around mutek
that cannot be written off nor ignored: if alain mongeau is more than just
rhetoric, then this must be dealt with openly and with honesty. I think
that, for the most part, we're all still waiting for that move, although I'=
m
willing to give the benefit of the doubt and to support the organisation fo=
r
its efforts. now if only they would get a little more organised ..

3:12pm, thurs may 29.

tobias c. van Veen

tobias c. van Veen -----------
http://www.quadrantcrossing.org
http://www.thisistheonlyart.com
------------- tobias@xxxxxxxxxxx
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