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In PROBES #31 we begin to consider evolutionary pressures and invented instruments and follow the twists and turns that led the xylophone out of Asia and Africa, spun it around the world and metamorphosed it into the vibraphone; with a coda from the intonarumori.
ResearchProbesChris Cutler
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Aho Ssan is a French musician of Ivorian and Ghanaian descent who has been involved in graphic design and film works under his given name, Desiré Niamké. These practices, like his multiple identity, resonate in his music. In this podcast we talk to Aho Ssan about his grandfather’s lost trumpet and about an Ivory Coast jazz band that’s impossible to track down. Along the way, we share the cinematic tension of his debut LP Simulacrum and the various routes that led him there. Techno’s cultural appropriation, Black Bandcamp, and the glaring lack of representation of black artists in global electronica are part of the road he has travelled and the lessons learnt along the way.
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Based in Dakar, Senegal, Raw Material Company is an independent, collaborative centre that aims to foster critical thinking through artistic practice. In this conversation, Marie Hélène Pereira and Fatima Bintou Rassoul Sy—two key members of Raw Material Company—discuss a situated feminist and decolonial practice that focuses on doing rather than enunciating and categorizing. They share some of their experiences and talk about the strategies they use to create rich forms of dialogue and to negotiate the tensions and the ideological and economic constraints imposed through the still-colonial structures of the so-called global North.
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In FONS ÀUDIO #48, Akram Zaatari contextualises his work 'Nature morte', which is part of the MACBA Collection. This film was produced for the 2008 exhibition 'Les Inquiets – 5 artistes sous la pression de la guerre' at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, which explored the war in the Middle East and its representations.
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Kristin Oppenheim employs the dramatic properties of her own voice to articulate sound and visual installations that immerse the spectator in hypnotic environments replete with potential narratives. In FONS AUDIO #12, Oppenheim gives us some tips for approaching her installation 'Hey Joe' (1996), which is part of the MACBA Collection.
"Reading Judith Butler, or about Judith Butler... that gender was something constructed. That was quite a shock for my generation. It’s different now but when I grew up this wasn’t a concept at all. It wasn’t imaginable at all. I grew up in the south of France, and it was just a fact that I would be this fat, long-haired girl that everybody disliked and had a strange body. That was a fact, that was not to be changed, that was how it was. And then, to conceive the possibility that this might be actually a construction, and that I can change that, which is also a privilege, I must say… That was revolutionary. And I know that for many queer people in my generation it has been like this."
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As recording supplanted sheet music in the 20th century, the presence of communal influence became unavoidably obvious once again as composers began to use recordings to make new recordings. From the beginning, recordings have been instruments.
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An introduction to the work and methodology of Japanese artist Yasunao Tone. The essay is based upon several conversations with the artist and some of his collaborators.