Project 2010
Presentations/Lectures
Wednesday October 7
Mark
Kremer and John Heymans: ‘Introduction’
Thursday
October 8
André
Kruysen, guest artist, meetings with students.
The Hague, Netherlands 1967, lives in The Hague
www.andrekruysen.nl
André
Kruysen builds on the achievements of geometric abstraction. His art primarily
consists of temporary sculptures or semi-architectonic structures, made of
wood, plaster and white paint, that engage with the light and architecture of a
place. One example is the
in situ work
‘Before one has a Past’ in the
exhibition
The Projection Project (MuHKA, Antwerp, 2006), a work with a formal language that is connected to
Russian Suprematism. His visual language is elementary and shows a fascination
with the primary sensations of light and space. In Kruysen’s art, opposites
meet. His interventions disrupt the existing architecture and its order while
introducing new structures that invite a meditative gaze and experience.
Wednesday November 11
Francesco Bernardelli: ‘***SOFT
OUTBURST*** Altered States of Rapturous Pleasure’
A program of
experimental films from the 1960s, central to which are the
physical/psychological pleasures of the multitude of wriggling 1960s’ bodies
liberated by the socio-political and personal transformations of the era.
Presented by Francesco
Bernardelli, an art
writer/curator/lecturer based in Milan, who is working in the ‘interzone’ of
contemporary art, time-based media, cinema and performance.
Text on the film programma
written and compiled by Francesco Bernardelli:
Wednesday November 11
Francesco Bernardelli: ‘***SOFT
OUTBURST*** Altered States of Rapturous Pleasure’
A program of
experimental films from the 1960s, central to which are the
physical/psychological pleasures of the multitude of wriggling 1960s’ bodies
liberated by the socio-political and personal transformations of the era.
Presented by Francesco
Bernardelli, an art
writer/curator/lecturer based in Milan, who is working in the ‘interzone’ of
contemporary art, time-based media, cinema and performance.
Text on the film programma
written and compiled by Francesco Bernardelli:
A program devoted
to the physical/psychological pleasures of the multitude of wriggling bodies
liberated by the socio-political and personal transformations of the 1960s. At
the time, the aim of mind-expansion and the tune-in/drop-out experience also
took on the direction of a wide attack on (pre-)established ways of perceiving
sensitivity and sensitive bodies, favoring a mapping of a new erogenous
geography of the body. In this, '60s experimental cinema is proximate to the
performance and dance work from the same era. In less than a decade a body of
works - of "haptic cinema" - was made, with artists engaged in a true
exploration of the human geography and the estatic pleasures of the senses.
Firmly rooted in
our minds (and in our memories) seem to lie vague reminiscences every time
we're approaching a loaded term like
extasis (o just plainly... ecstasy)
- basically, as we all know, what re-appears is a fundamental tension between
the experience (whatsoever it could be summoned up..) and its mediation, a
tension embedded in the very resonance of the E- word. Anciently defined
(etimologically derived from the Greek: ekstasis, “to stand outside of or
transcend oneself") as the most intense form of "transcendence"
(a nearly mystical t.) , a
rapturous delight, such an intense exaltation
(of mind or feelings... or both) - a form of ecstatic power - has been
described countless times as rapture as well, suggesting a state of
transformation, a kind of trance or near immobility-state which can only be
produced by overflowing and overpowering emotions. In later times Ecstasy,
gradually acquiring a variety of new applications and extensions, has been
applied to any strong emotion bringing it closer to bodily, even carnal
significations, while rapture, on the other hand, has come to usually imply a
meaning of intense bliss or profound beatitude.
The inner desire
to cross and transgress the limits of physical experience and expansive
perception has influenced the collective body's imaginaries and expanded the
very notion of the "altered" body - a collector, a chaneller as well
as a register of carnal sensations, thrills and ultimately immediate,
non-verbal comprehension. This program aims at channeling such psycho-physical
energies towards our contemporary understanding.
List of Titles
CAT'S CRADLE
(1959) by Stan Brakhage
16mm on video,
b&w, silent, 6'
At the beginning
of Brakhage's filmmaking carrer, he read all the writings of Eisenstein he
could locate, and this dense montage film is one result. A record of an
encounter between Brakhage, Jane and their friends James Tenney and Carolee
Schneemann, it intercuts fragments of each with a cat, floral wallpaper, an
embroidered fabric. The figures, the cat, and inanimate objects are made to
collide with each other, but they also seem to mysteriously commingle, almost
as of achemically transforming themselves into each other, people becoming
objects and animals, and inanimate things seemingly becoming human. (Fred
Camper)
"Sexual
witchcraft involving two couples and a 'medium' cat."
CHUMLUM (1964) by
Ron Rice
16mm on video,
color, sound, 9'
KISS (1963/'64) by
Andy Warhol
16mm on video,
b&w, silent, 34'
Similarly to his
Screen Tests, KISS is a silent film composed of a series of portraits
consisting of several-minute unbroken shots of Factory regulars, Warhol
superstars, guests, friends he thought had "star potential".
Some Warhol
scholars date the Kiss films from November/December 1963. However, Warhol
probably started shooting them much earlier - around August 1963 and continued
to shoot them through the end of 1964, if not beyond. According to Warhol in
Popism,
they were still doing KISS movies in the summer of 1964 when Gerard Malanga and
Mark Lancaster did one - in August 1964. According to Bob Colacello, the idea
for KISS - close-ups of
couples kissing
each other for three minutes each - came from the old Hayes Office regulation
forbidding actors in movies from touching lips for more than three seconds.
(Warholstars.org)
The films were
made between 1964 and 1966 at Warhol's Factory studio in New York City.
Subjects were captured in stark relief by a strong keylight, and filmed by
Warhol with his stationary 16mm Bolex camera on silent, black and white,
100-foot rolls of film at 24 frames per second. The resulting
two-and-a-half-minute film reels were then screened in 'slow motion' at 16
frames per second.
8/64 ANA (1964) by
Kurt Kren (1929–1998)
b&w, silent,
2'40"
film with Gunter
Brus
"8/64: ANA is
Kren's first film of an 'action' by Gunter Brus. This three-minute film was far
more akin to the American-style 'happening' in that the content was not
particularly extreme. It was built up from items such as broken bicycle parts,
a nude model, pieces of furniture, and these elements were then obscured or
transformed by having a layer of paint thrown on them." C.C.
"Günter Brus'
work is quite different from that of his contemporary, and as a result Kren's
films are different as well. Whereas all of his Muehl films were in bright
color, glorying in the eye-catching palette of these "aktionen", the
Brus films are all in black and white and decidedly more abstract, distanced
from the concrete reality of the event being captured. If Mühl's aktions are
messy and sexualized, Brus seems to be more conceptual, more varied." Ed
Howard
10B/65 SILBER
(1965) by Kurt Kren
b&w, silent,
2'34"
In Silber, Kren's
abstractions progress even further, to the point where virtually the entire
film takes place in a vague, under-exposed darkness.
12/66 COS ALPHA
(1966) by Kurt Kren
color, silent,
9'16"
"Kren's last
film to include any direct reference to Otto Muehl is 12/66: COSINUS ALPHA, a
10-minute film that completes a cycle of elaborate sensual montages and
materials." - Stephen Dwoskin, Film Is
"Of Kren's Mühl
films, only his last, Cosinus Alpha, slows the action down enough to make it
more coherent, rather than treating it as material for montage. At 9 minutes
long, it is also the longest of the Aktionist films, and its pace seems
positively languid in comparison to the others. What comes across here is a
sense of the erotic and the sexual in Mühl's work, a dimension of his
performances largely missing in Kren's other films, despite the copious nudity.
Here, the camera's relative steadiness, and the slow, deliberate movements,
emphasize the sensual contact of flesh on flesh, the rubbing and caressing as
bodies rub against one another, covered in thick soupy muck, kneading the
liquids into one another's skin." Ed Howard
EYE MITH (1972) by
Stan Brakhage
16mm on video,
color, silent, 10"
INVOCATION OF MY
DEMON BROTHER (1969) by Kenneth Anger
16mm on video,
color, sound, 11'
"The
Shadowing forth of Lord Lucifer, as the Powers gather at a midnight mass."
(K. Anger)
"A film that
no number of viewings will ever exhaust, a film that will always remain a
source of mysterious energy as only great works of art do." -
Jonas Mekas, The
Village Voice
"Anger's
purest visual achievement ... a conjuration of pagan forces that comes off the
screen in a surge of spiritual and mystical power. It has weirdly compelling
imagery, with a soundtrack by Mick Jagger on a Moog Synthesizer that has the
insistent hallucinatory power of voodoo." - Richard Whitehall, LA Free
Press
Awards: Tenth
Independent Film Award (for the year 1969) by Film Culture.
This Award was
presented "for his film INVOCATION OF MY DEMON BROTHER specifically, and
for his entire creative work in general; for his unique fusion of magick,
symbolism, myth, mystery, and vision with the most
modern
sensibilities, techniques, and rhythms of being; for revealing it all in a
refreshed light, persistently, constantly, and with a growing complexity of means
and content; at the same time, for doing it with an amazing clarity, directness
and sureness."
SEATS TWO (1970)
by Frans Zwartjes
16mm on video,
b&w, sound, 9'
Two women, the
director's regular actresses Moniek Toebosch and Trix Zwartjes, are sitting side
by side on a bench; they are looking at a photo of a mountain landscape and a
village (which appeared as well at the beginning of the short film). An
underlying physical attraction between the two is almost perceptible, but
nothing happens...
HERMITAGE (1967)
by Carmelo Bene
35mm on video,
color, sound, 24'
SPECTATOR (1970)
by Frans Zwartjes
16mm on video,
b&w, sound, 11'
Christian Manders
and Moniek Toebosch act the artist and his model. Safely hidden behind his
camera (a binocular actually) the photographer cannot get enough of his
bewitching model with the long eye-lashes.
ANAMNESIS I-II-III
(1969) by Frans Zwartjes
16mm on video,
b&w, sound, 16'
A film in three
parts in which a man and a woman, Trix and Lodewijk de Boer, in a house and
outside along the water side, circle around each other, repulsing and
attracting each other.
THE BED (1968) by
James Broughton
16mm on video,
color, 20'
"One of the
most lyrically erotic of independent films, THE BED is a merry allegory which
celebrates impudently and imaginatively just about everything that could happen
in bed (and some things that couldn't) - birth, young love, loneliness, dreams
and death, amid all sorts of hanky-panky from fetishism to plain old
lechery." - LA Free Press
"Broughton's
finest film by far. It exists in a state of play fully realized." - Stan
Brakhage
In 1967!'s
"Summer of love," Broughton made a film, The Bed, a celebration of
the dance of life which broke taboos against frontal nudity and won prizes at
many film festivals. It rekindled Broughton!s filmmaking and led to more
tributes to the human body (The Golden Positions), the eternal child (This is
It), the eternal return (The Water Circle), the eternal moment (High Kukus),
and the eternal feminine (Dreamwood). "These eternalities praised
the beauty of
humans, the surprises of soul, and the necessity of merriment," Broughton
wrote.
Indeed, Broughton
repeatedly explored the temple of the human body – the "Godbody" – as
a taproot for healing and peace, both for the individual and society.
SONG OF THE
GODBODY (1977) by James Broughton
16mm on video,
color, sound, 8'
"The film
consists predominantly of extreme close-ups of parts of Broughton's body. The
camera slowly becomes the tool revealing the erotic beauty of the body and the
sensual pleasure in loving oneself. The ecstasy and power of sexual
gratification are celebrated by the camera, as it maintains an erotic role,
probing, revealing and visually caressing. Broughton's song is a praise of his
body as divine androgyne, and an acceptance of this higher godly sexual
power." - Richard Bartone, Millennium Film Journal
EROGENY (1976) by
James Broughton
Camera, Robert
Gaylord; Poem, James Broughton; Producer, Robert A. Haller for Pittsburgh
Filmmakers.
The film travels
in close-up over the mysterious terrains of nude human bodies as they touch and
explore one another. It is like an expedition into human geography, an intimate
sculpture, an erogenous healing ceremony, and an ode to the pleasures of touch.
Also it is an homage to old friends, Willard Maas and Marie Menken, who made
the first body poem in cinema history, Geography of the Body, in 1943.
Awards: Bellevue
Film Festival, 1976; NY Film Exposition, 1977; American Film/Video Festival,
1977.
PEYOTE QUEEN
(1965) by Storm De Hirsch
16mm on video,
color, 8'
A further
exploration into the color of ritual, the color of thought; a journey through
the underworld of sensory derangement.
Extract from ALICE
(GOES TO)/IN ACIDLAND (1968) by John Donne (pseudonym)
color, sound, 12'
- LSD trip sequence -
..."Removing
her clothes, Alice changed into a costume more befitting her new personality.
She now belonged to another society, another world. A world of Pot, LSD and
Free Love. Alice Trenton, as her father knew her, was dead. Long Live Alice.
She had now become a wild and provocative twinight hippie. Complete with the
Indian beads and moccasins. " (from the motion picture's narrating voice)
Alice In Acidland
explores the drastic downward spiral of Alice who is exposed to mind altering
drugs by a teacher at junior college. The scenes from Alice's most memorable
drug trip are in color; then you get the final shot in movie.
LOVESONG (2001) by
Stan Brakhage
16mm on video,
color, silent, 10' 49"
LOVESONG is a
hand-painted elaborately step-printed work which utilizes light transparencies
in combination with light bounced directly off the surface of the individual
film frames to establish and eventually enmesh two distinct entities of
variable paint (more distinct than superimposition or bi-packing could achieve)
- said entities taking on separate personae against which (and finally in
conjunction with which) the glyphic representations of body-parts gradually
entwining, separating and re-combining again and again, are interwoven with the
expressively drawn sexual organs represented in dark outlines which often
'explode' into black sperm-marks surrounding multiply colored egg-likenesses.
Wednesday December 16
Stefan Rusu: ‘INVASIA and FLAT SPACE’
Artist/curator
Stefan Rusu from Chisinau/Moldova, talks about his
curatorial and artist projects among which is INVASIA/2001, that deals with exploring the
differences and the appropriation of social and cultural aspects, as well as
the re-evaluation of relations between cultural contexts of Eastern Europe and
Far Eastern regions (Mongolia and Central Asia).
He introduces his recent and ongoing project,
FLAT SPACE, a real size replica of a socialist apartment in the public space of
Chisinau, which is designed to host an interdisciplinary platform for
contemporary art and culture. Flat Space is a commissioned work that aims to
represent the identity of the CHIOSC project of the Oberliht Young Artists
Association from Chisinau/Moldova.
INVASIA, Orheiul
Vechi/Chisinau, 2001 (
http://www.art.md/2001/invasia/)
Invasia
was an international project launched by [KSA:K], Center for Contemporary Art,
Chisinau, in collaboration with the National Museum of History and National
Museum of Archeology of Republic of Moldova in 2001. The incursions of the
Golden Horde over the Eurasia continent back to the Middle Ages, served as a
driving source for conceiving this event. The archeological site Orheiul Vechi
and the National Museum of History and Museum of Archeology from Chisinau where
the destination points where INVASIA was activated. While the ruins of the city
where intended to be the site where the artists will produce site-specific
works, the Museums hosted the conference, artist works and the project
documentation.
Flat Space.
Chisinau/2009 (
http://www.oberliht.org.md/chiosc.html)
Departure
point for the design of FLAT SPACE was the interest in the private space
limited by socialist society standards, that represents a strong visual element
in the contemporary urban and social landscape of the East European countries.
Originally it was conceived as a multifunctional piece, the point being that
architecture comes with a specific kind of well-defined functionality of living
space, but I was concerned with overcoming the idea of a fixed functionality.
The FLAT SPACE project is a functional replica of a one-room apartment
comprising the basic components of a typical socialist habitat: kitchen,
bathroom, living room and a balcony covered with plastic windows. Transparency
is an important feature of the project since the apartment has no external
walls (with the exception of the façade). At some point the project can be
perceived as a model of city-planning architecture, extracted from a typical socialist
residential building block and placed in public space, where it will function
as an open space/platform. The balcony is a key element, it will function as
cultural info point. The other part of the space exposed to the public will
bear a multifunctional character and is an open platform for public
presentations and cultural events.
Stefan Rusu (Born in 1964, Kâietu, Moldova) based Chisinau, his artist and curatorial
agenda is closely connected to undergoing processes and changes occurring in
the post-socialist societies after 1989. Among his preoccupations are the
aspects of mass-manipulation techniques, political strategies (political
engineering), forms of colonization & culturalization that culminated in
some cases in the construction of artificial identities, fake languages and
political entities, as in the case of Republic of Moldova. Rusu was trained as a
visual artist and later extended his practice to curating, managing and
fundraising projects, editing TV programs, producing experimental films, TV
reports and documentaries. In 2005/2006 he attended the Curatorial Training
Program at De Appel from Amsterdam where he co-curated Mercury in Retrograde (www.mercuryinretrograde.org).
Wednesday January 13
Ben Schot: 'Mole’s Milk'
At the invitation by Mark Kremer, artist Ben
Schot will present an evening programme. First the artist will realize a
performance. whereafter a live concert will start of Dutch musicians Frans de
Waard and Roel Meelkop of the electro-acoustic ensemble 'Kapotte Muziek'
(='Broken Music'). The evening will end with the screening of the movie 'El
Topo' (= The Mole, 1970) by Alejandro Jodorowsky, the Paris based, Chilean
artist/filmmaker/magician/psychotherapist.
When asked about the trip in relation to
art, Ben Schot has the view that the trip is a phenomenon that, although it can
be analyzed and theorized, first and foremost is an experience. Trips whether
they are based on drugs or on artistic material, have to do with immersion,
immersion of the self in a journey that may take you to subconscious regions of
the mind and psyche. It is exactly this what his programme has in store.
Ben Schot works as an artist, a publisher
and a teacher, and is based in Rotterdam. His publishing house, SEA URCHIN
editions, specializes in works of the historical avant-garde and the
counter-culture. Its website
www.sea-urchin.net
has a special
chapter called 'Trips'.
Tuesday February 16
Hugo Canoilas: 'A painting getting its kicks'
The GTBT.r evening presentation is in the
hands of the Portuguese artist Hugo Canoilas. In his narrative he will focus on
the intimate ties between the progressive art and music of the 1950s and 1960s,
that tried to capture the changing spirit of the times. His interest concerns
on the one hand the ideas with which artists and musicians worked and their
-sometimes quite revolutionary- strivings after, in Nietzschean terms, an
Umwertung aller Werte (revaluation of all values).
On the other hand, the same artists and
musicians also introduced a new visceral or primitive feel, making speed and
sweat an integral part of their work. The presentation is structured as a road
journey with three stops:
1. Jackson Pollock and the unconscious
2. On the road with On Kawara, Ed Ruscha
and R. Rauschenberg
3. Helio Oiticica and Oswaldo de
Andrade's anthropophagia notion
In
his own words, Hugo Canoilas' work has a strong link to history and the art
evolution as it occurred during the first period of Modernism. His art takes on
different media/modes using popular aesthetics, politics and its representation,
and ideas from philosophy, poetry and history. The emphasis in his oeuvre is on
painting, understood as a material cause and as a metaphor. Painting as an
ultra-sensitive means to register the signals of the world, and as a potent
tool to sensitize the spectator and the world.
Hugo
Canoilas (born 1977 in Portugal, lives in Oeiras) is part of a young generation
of Portuguese artists who investigate legacies of contemporary art, taking
inspiration mostly from Anglo-American and Latin American contexts. What does
it mean that artists at certain moments, for example the era of the
sixties, and at certain places,
developed poignant proposals The
recent Portuguese process of artistic inquiry is interesting: in the history of
the country, isolation and separation from main centers and histories are
features. However, nowadays these negative aspects seem to become positive
incitations. As a parallel think of the relatively isolated city and harbour of
Vancouver, that recently produced so many internationally active artists.
Currently
the art scene in Lisboa and Oporto is vibrant, and Hugo Canoilas is playing an
active part in it, next to his international activities. His art is informed by
1960s experiments in art and life, and also by other sources; his works contain
explicit references to artists that inspire him, for instance Hélio Oiticica,
Barnett Newman and Blinky Palermo. At the moment Hugo Canoilas is immersed in a
research regarding the theme of the fall,
the act of falling, and the idea of gravity (attraction and fatality).
Wednesday March 24
Maxim Chapochnikov: Presentation on Shamanism
'Shamanism is a range of beliefs and practices based on
an animistic approach to the existing world. Its function is to connect the
world of human beings with the world of spirits in order to restore the natural
balance. Disorder of balance may take form of bad fortune, physical or mental
disease, community problems, death etc. By means of connecting to the spiritual
world a
shaman (priest) identifies
the malicious spirits causing trouble. Through ritualistic actions the shaman
chases bad spirits away and protects the integrity. Spiritual power gives a
shaman an ability to see through the future and past and influence the flow of
events. Shamanism was until the beginning of the XXth century widespread among
the various ethnicities on the vast territory of Siberia, from Ural Mountains
to the Pacific Ocean. Soviet power banned shamanic practices. Shamanism went
underground until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Since then we witness a
revival of shamanism in Siberia.
'Comparable animistic beliefs are spread around the
world: North and South Americas (Native Americans, Inuits, indigenous people of
Brasil, Fuegians), Asia
(Korean, the native people of South East Asia, Tibetans, Ainus), West-Africa
(Benin), Australia (aboriginals). My presentation will focus on the shamanic
practices of Turkic-Mongolian people of Siberia and Central Asia, in particular
the Tuvans and Buryats. The speaker witnessed many of these practices during
research trips to Siberia between 1991 and 2006. Shamanism is basically not a
religion. It is a rather a view on the human existence in the universe and a
set of practical prescriptions to survive in it. Shamanism is too diverse and
excentric to become an institution. Though in recent times there are precedents
of shamanic organisations.
'The word “shaman” originates from the Siberian Tungus
language. Turkic people of Siberia (Tuvans, Khakass, Altais) use the word
“kham” or “kam”. From here comes the Russian word “kamlanie” or shamanistic
ritual. During a ritual the shaman calls upon his tutolary protective spirits
to assist him. He obtains these spirits during the initiation and they are
often of animal origin (snakes, birds). Traditionally a shaman wears a costume
designed to protect him and keep bad spirits away. Such a costume is inhibited
by representations of his help spirits.
'During the ritual a shaman travels through various
planes of the spirit world and uses a drum as a riding animal on this journey.
The shaman operates in the state of trance, which is necessary to enter the
other world. He reaches this state by means of singing, beating the drum and
“dancing”. After the balance is restored the shaman returns to the human world
and tells what has happened.
'Neo-shamanism takes various forms and differs from
traditional practices. It ranges from a translation of rituals into Soviet
times theatre shows, to commercialisation of practices in post Soviet Russia,
to New Age shamanism and spiritual tourism. As an illustration I will present
own field recordings, and show objects and images from my collection.'
(Maxim Chapochnikov)
Maxim
Chapochnikov: biography/background
DJ, researcher,
artist
Born
in a small nuclear research center in Ural (Russia) in 1963. In 1982 he moved
to Moscow to study economy, but music became his main obsession. Soon after
perestroika began Maxim moved to Amsterdam in 1988. After getting acquainted
with the local Amsterdam situation he became fascinated by a growing
house/techno music-scene and started off in the Netherlands as a dj, which
still remains his part time occupation. At the same time he developed interest
in “exotic” musics from around the world, since Amsterdam offered boundless
access to various kinds of music. Traveling back in Russia, he rediscovered the
vastness and beauty of his land, and he started to travel to different parts of
the country (
Siberia, Urals, Baltics),
to find and record musical styles of many ethnic groups living there.
Between
1991 and 2006 numerous research trips to Siberia and Central Asia, studying
music, culture, sound, environment, and shamanistic practices of nomadic
ethnicities. In this way he made connections with musicians and music groups,
scientists, and experts in culture. Maxim organized tours for these musicians
in Europe and also collaborations with Western musicians. His musical research
was presented on national Dutch radio and TV. Since 1990 he is doing regular
work in this very field: research, compiling concert and festival programs,
coordinating recordings, CD releases and licensing, promoting a number of
musicians and their recorded material. For example he organized the very first
concerts in Holland of the world’s leading overtone singing group Huun Huur Tu.
The
results of the research of ethnic cultures influences the artistic works of
Maxim.
Other
influences include Dada, Russian Futurism and Space Age culture of the 60’s.
His art projects are musical production, radio programs, conceptual events, dj
sets and cooperation with other artists. As a musician Maxim participated in a
number of music groups, working with Sainkho Namchilak (Tuva), Albina
Degtyareva (Yakutia) and OMFO (Amsterdam a.o.).
Wednesday June 16
Gherman Popov: Presentation/Performance
on traditional music from Central Asia
Gherman
Popov is a practising musician and strong advocator of traditional music from
Central Asia. About his presentation and professional background, he writes:
'My
presentation will consist of the following stages:
1.
Demonstration of throat singing styles as well as a display of a playing
techniques of some traditional instruments from South Siberia, such as: khomus,
a mouth harp; kuraij, a vertical flute; morinkhur, two stringed horse cello;
shantsi, banjo liked lute;
2.
Excursion into the possible origins of these instruments, their ceremonial
purposes and the metaphysical significance of their melodies and
psychoacoustics;
3. Q
& A.
The
aim of my presentation is to open up a discussion on music as a form of
cognitive science and its current decline. Addressing the issues in connection
to Southern Siberia – a region where archetypical remnants of music are still
to be found – will help us to find some answers to this rarely discussed
subject.
Gherman
Popov. Born in 1966 in the port city of Odessa, USSR, studied
at the Academy of Radio Communication. In 1989 he moved to Amsterdam and
started combining traditional sounds from the East with electronic music,
working as sound artist, musician and composer. Throughout his career he
collaborated with many musicians and artists mainly from Central Asia (Sainkho,
Huun Huur Tuu, Samo, Mezrep, Almagul Menlibayeva and more), has written music
for films and theatreplays and participated in ethnographical researches &
expeditions. On the German label Essay Recordings, under the name OMFO, he released
several albums incl. the acclaimed “Trans Balkan Express”, “We are the
Shepherds” and “Omnipresence”. Years of travelling far and wide, making
hundreds of recordings, dwelling in ancient musical cultures, learning to play
exotic instruments, have culminated in present day electro-acoustic experiments
introducing
western audiences to what he regards as the “intrinsic modernism of the
Orient”.