I will be heading to Madrid this weekend to perform at Sonikas, an experimental music festival that happens each year. This will be the first solo performance I’ve done in a year. As some now know, I’m less interested in  working with the notion of a “solo artist”, and moving toward more dynamic collaborative group activities. I am not so familiar with the other artists, but the program looks something like this:

Friday, October 24th

20:00 h. ALFREDO COSTA MONTEIRO (Antifrost/Monotype-Portugal)-LIVE
21:00 h. MALTE STEINER aka ELEKTRONENGEHIRN (Block4-Germany)-LIVE AUDIO & VIDEO

Saturday, October 25th

19:30 h. DAOUNºFROMM (Addsensor-Spain)-DJ
21:00 h. CHRISTOPHE CHARLES (Mille Plateaux/Subrosa-France)-LIVE

Sunday, October 26th

20:00 h. TZESNE (Drone Records/Antifrost/Series Negras-Spain)-LIVE AUDIO
PARALUX (Series Negras-Spain)-LIVE VIDEO
21:00 h. JOHN GRZINICH (Sir.records/Staaltplaat-EE.UU.)-LIVE

The festival is organized by: Vallecas Todo Cultura, CRC and Klangmaschine

A selection of my Location Sound Films will be shown in Sweden next month… unfortunately I will not be able to attend the event.

Full Pull 08 | Exhibition
Dan Spegel, Olof Broström, Iris Piers
Stapelbädden, Malmö, August 29-September 21

I’ll be heading off to London soon to take part in the annual Atlantic Waves festival. The program includes a SIRR records night on Sunday the 11th at the ICA.

As a bonus, an unreleased track of mine will be published on a double CD thats included with the November issue of The Wire.

Other artists include: Gert-Jan Prins, eRikm, Jason Kahn, @c, Vitor Joaquim, Ran Slavin, Anthony Pateras, Eric La Casa, Pedro Carneiro, Stilb, Marc Behrens, Safe And Sound, Manuel Mota, Aki Onda, Achim Wollscheid, Laurence Rassel & Terre Thaemlitz, Gintas K, Manu Holterbach, o.blaat, Paulo Raposo, Tim Hecker, The Beautiful Schizophonic, André Gonçalves, Sawako, Kenneth Kirschner, Shinjiro Yamaguchi, Jonas Olesen, Richard Chartier

The exhibition SKAN in Riga ran from September 29th to October 13th. The exhibition focused on “sound art” activity in Latvia. It was a mix of performances during the opening weekend which included 2 commissions, one for Jacob Kirkegaard and one for Francisco Lopez. Both recorded sounds in different environments around the town and mixed them for a live presentation. The exhibition included the video documentation from the Riga Sound Locations workshop I was involved with in August. As I did not have much time to view all the works I’m not able to provide a full overview of the exhibition. In general I felt it was a fairly mature collection and provided a fair balance between Latvian and international artists. Pictured here is our Riga Sound Locations piece, a mechanical vibration installation by Finnish architects Tommi Grönlun and Petteri Nisunen, a pool for water vibrations in water by Voldemars Johansons, a large scale tape loop work by Evelīna Deičmane and a feedback piece for metal plates by Jacob Kirkegaard.

Last weekend I took part in the annual Observatori Festival in Valencia, Spain. The excellent program of experimental music, “About: Blank” was curated by Ruben Garcia. As I arrived rather late on Friday evening I missed most of the opening program. The Saturday evening program included Dave Phillips from Switzerland and PITA (Peter Rheberg) from Austria. The venue was wisely chosen for the performances (most agreed). The space, Sala La Gallera, was a former cock fighting ring from the 19th century that was now converted into an exhibition space. The sound system was enough for a venue 5 times the size making it all too easy to approach mind numbing sound levels (which Pita and Dave both reached). Nonetheless the quality allowed the performers unlimited dynamic range. Dave Phillips opened with an intense set based on the sounds of insects (many recorded in Thailand) and ended with a quiet note printed on a flier reminding us of how limited the lifespan of humanity would be without insects (despite our attempts to eradicate them). His second set had a certain level of fear factor about it (or was it that I thought the building would collapse?). A video projected on the ceiling accompanied a vocal noise performance where images of animal cruelty were interlaced with sharp quotes ( I’ll always remember: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities- Voltaire). PITA followed with powernoise set spewed afourth from his trusty laptop. The final two performances on Sunday night were myself followed by John Duncan. As John’s sound work inspired me long ago it was a pleasure to perform on the same night. I made a variation on my “Sound Locations: Transpositions” piece where I take a human approach to spatialization by walking throughout the audience with speakers attached to my body. Judging by the response it seemed people enjoyed it thoroughly. John Duncan followed with a solid piece played back through a quadraphonic arrangement of the sound system. Rather than ending up like a spatialized piece I say the quad setup allowed varying levels of submersion into the layers of banded noise streams. Yes, and in between the noise I had a quick look around Valencia, which looks to be an appealing place to live if you don’t mind the heat (it was already getting over 30C in mid-May).

In Japan I took part in this years Abiko Open Air Exhibition. Each year a number of artists are invited to create site-specific works or performances in a nearby park located in the eastern part of Abiko city (1 hour from Tokyo towards the Chiba prefecture). The event is organized by a group of local artists and volunteers, some of whom took part in MoKS summer art symposium 2 years ago, Hiroshi Egami, Shirakawa Masahiro and Takashi Ikezawa.

Apart from the Abiko project, we took the opportunity to present a recent sound performance piece developed by Hitoshi Kojo, Evelyn Müürsepp and myself called Clinamen Tides. This piece was performed in Tokyo, Abiko, Osaka and Kyoto.

Here you can find 4 photo galleries from the Japan trip (under November).

Pushing the Medium was an event concept I created to bridge a concentrate collaborative residency and public presentations in nearby towns. The first edition took place at MOKS and Tartu in October 2004.

Pushing the Medium 2 took place in Nodar, Portugal in September 2006. There are far too many stories to relay here but the highlight of the event was being able to spend time in the small village of Nodar. It’s a great place for creative intervention and and sonic exploration. Many thanks to Paulo and the Costa brothers for putting that event together. The above photo shows a collaborative performance made with Maksims Shentelevs and Antonio Della Marina.

View the photo galleries from these events.

Pushing the Medium 3, was held one month later (October 2006) in Friuli Italy. In continuing with the themes of the event, there was room the play in the mountainous area surrounding Topolo. I was able to spend time wandering the forests and making some spontaneous acoustic actions with murmer, Yannick, Olivier, Koz and others.

Pushing the Medium 3 gave birth to the Revenant Topolo CD

PostsovkhoZ 6 program of sound art, experimental music and video

Saturday August 5, 2006 – Performances from 19:00
Saturday+Sunday, August 5-6 2006 – Installations open from 13:00 – 19:00

with:

Phill Niblock and Katherine Liberovskaya (US/CA)
extended performance with sounds and images

Kukkiva Poliisi (FI)
experimental music and performance ensemble of 5 women from Finland

jgrzinich / Hitoshi Kojo / eku (US/JP/EST)
sound performance

jgrzinich (US/EST)
participatory sound installation

murmer (Patrick McGinnley) (UK)
site specific sound installation

Nakajima Rie (JP/UK)
sound installation

Maksims Shentelevs (LV)
Sound/video performance