Alga Marghen Label Night # 1
2010-12-02
- Dates
- 2010-12-02 — 2010-12-02
- Lieu
- Catégorie
- Cinema
_ Jeudi 02.12.2010
_ Projection
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_ Established in 1996, the Alga Marghen label specialises in twentieth-century composers, avant-garde artists and ‘experimental historical obscurities and outsiders’. This label night focuses on audio and video artists closely linked to the Fluxus movement, featuring four artists from different generations and with a different musical background. The evening is dedicated to Robert Filliou who passed away on December 2 1987.
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_ When, in the 1960s, the painter and publicist Anton Bruhin began playing the Jew’s harp, a small ‘mouth instrument’ which is often claimed to be one of the oldest in the world, it was ‘by accident’. In a career spanning more than fifty years, Bruhin has built up an extensive network of other Jew’s harp players, with members in places such as Siberia, Hungary, Japan and Austria. In concerts, he plays his own self-made instruments while also making use of various resonators such as the water-filled tubes he has recently developed.
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_ In 1974, the French artist Ghédalia Tazartès bought a microphone, tape recorder and band echo. Primarily using his voice as an instrument, he began to develop ‘Impromuz’, his own musical language. In his performances, Tazartès creates a musical background of drones and loops over which he sings in a style reminiscent of gypsy folk music. Sudden turns, discovered sounds and the introduction of stringed instruments and electronics make this autodidact a unique figure in the musique concrète generation that includes Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry.
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_ According to an old biography, Benjamin Patterson was ‘proficient on the double-bass, knowledgeable in music theory and history and acquainted with the crafts of composition and conducting.’ Following a career in symphony orchestras in Canada, he moved to Germany in 1960. In this pre-Fluxus period he wrote and performed several of his emblematic works including Paper Piece, Lemons and Variations for Double-Bass. He worked with Robert Filliou in Paris and in 1962 he and George Maciunas organised the historic Fluxus Festival in Wiesbaden, the first of a series of Fluxus events worldwide. His name remains inextricably linked with the movement to the present day, even though he worked for two decades as a consultant to theatre, dance and music companies. In 1988, he picked up the thread as a musician once again. This evening sees Patterson present a collection of his work, a new composition and a duet with Rhodri Davies, an innovative musician who has worked together with such people as John Butcher, David Toop and Yasunao Tone, exploring the contradictory and complimentary flux between composition and improvisation.
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_ The evening will also feature the screening of rare video work from Joe Jones, Ben Patterson and Robert Filliou from the collection of the Centre Pompidou among others. These...