My Inhaled Books #17

Inhaled books #17
Maurice Blanchot - Le pas au-delà
Half-inhaled, half-exhaled since 2000.

My Inhaled books #11

Inhaled books #11
James Joyce - Finnegans Wake.
Among my earliest inhaled since 1988.

My Inhaled books #10

Inhaled books #10
Deleuze & Guattari - L'Anti-Oedipe
Among my earliest inhaled since 1990.

Artworks: Frank Stella (7)

 

Frank Stella - Tuxedo Junction (1960)

The HNW-Q No.10: Peter Keller (Condo Horro)

Robert Smithson, Partial Buried Woodshed

Dear Readers,

I am very proud to present the HNW-Q No.10 featuring this time Peter Keller and his absolutely outstanding new project called Condo Horro. It is no secret that I am bored and annoyed by 99,9 percent of the HNW-output today. You probably know my usual rant ;) :) that HNW fails on all levels and the good is news this time I won't repeat it (Do I hear faint applause in the background?). But this time it seems that I took this consternated approach towards HNW one step further to catapult me, myself and I out of this position. And almost automatically and unnoticed I started to be annoyed from being annoyed or to be bored from being bored leading me finally to a new state of serene sobriety. And this has always been the trigger for new discoveries. 

And guess what on day one of this new serene mental state I discovered Keller's Condo Horro on bandcamp. And I can say that I was immediately fascinated even struck by the brilliance of Keller's new interpretatory approach to this sadly otherwise nearly dead branch of experimental music. Being mainly and usually stuck in the repetitive circles of violence, atrocities, diverse fetishisms and perversions down to your usual boring crypto-religious or nihilistic (means nearly the same, but most of these freaks still don't get it) interpretations of the void and the ultra-boring reworkings, deformations or recyclings of already existing music (a schmock idea let's say from the 1950's of the last century. From Cage's 4'33'' to Fluxus and of course James Tenney's genius reworking of Elvis Presley's "Blue suede shoes"(1961). A boring idea sampled and repeated to death in popular culture.). But Keller's idea is different and innovative at once. Condo Horro is among the first projects (maybe Anonymous approach to read HNW as a tool for the remembrance of historical atrocities was also one step in the right direction. But this project was mostly ignored back then.) that creatively and concretely draws real conclusions out of Romain Perrot's mature innovation without copying it.

Condo Horro tries to inscribe and/or to extract the "void" out of and into the concrete problems of urban development and urban living (gentrification) and mirroring it or echoing it back sonically (through extremely clever soundsourcing) directly back into our living rooms. This makes his HNW-project Condo Horro highly inventive and gives it an almost documentary style and impetus. This re-opens the HNW basements (mostly governed by sadness, violence, perversions and depressions) and our ears for our social realities. Performing, deforming and reforming the HNW-void as a placeholder for a reenactment or cruel mirroring repetition of the modern world, its nihilistic excavations and all the wonderful pleasures of modern living. Keller stellt HNW wieder vom Kopf auf die Füsse (to use this german formulation describing usually the twist from idealism to materialism or from Hegel to Marx) and that's a good and necessary move. A collaborative project on cassette called The Climate Refugees is in the making for Altar of Waste this summer. Doing more research for a socio-political rebooting of the HNW paradigm.

In an impressive row of releases starting in 2015 Peter Keller's socio-political concretization of HNW becomes crystal clear. I highly recommend to look into Keller's facebook and bandcamp material. As a final hint I would like to link Condo Horro to Masami Akita's and David Phillips's commitment to animal rights. This is really intelligent stuff. Please support this awesome project ! I give you a few examples and here is Keller's bandcamp comment:"White noise walls for dystopian urban living.The lack of character and individuality are perfect for modern apathetic lifestyles.": Wall Out Those Who Have No Walls (Big Pharma, 2016), Bright Facades of Prosperity (Lurker Bias 2016), Blocks of Nothing (Unequal #3, 2016), Market Rate (Unequal #2, 2015), No Development (Unequal #1, 2015), The Landed Gentrifiers (HNW Netlabel 2015).

This is the HNW-Q No.10
brilliantly completed

by Peter Keller, Condo Horro.

The HNW-Q No. 10

[1] I discovered and invented HNW for myself, when I first heard Vomir and recognized the genius behind his anti-concept. I have been a big fan of proto-HNW acts like C.C.C.C., Incapacitants, Chop Shop, and others who composed with walls of static, but Vomir distilled the sounds and concept to its most perfect and pure statement.

Unfortunately, everyone either copied and worshipped and fetishized the idea of nothingness, or brought in the same transgressive themes repeated ad nauseum in harsh noise and power electronics. I saw the potential of HNW to be a vehicle for purity of concept, to the point of obsessiveness, much like the obsessive nature of its sound.

I had been thematically obsessive before in my long-running disease-focused project Bacillus, which also used textured walls as building blocks within harsh noise. After discovering HNW, I noticed there were few, if any, projects that had any socio-political themes; add to that the current issues of gentrification that I saw first-hand while living here in the fast-growing city of Seattle, and Condo Horro was born.

[2] The initial radicality of HNW would be preserved, if it was recognized.

[3] HNW is a glorious contradiction. The stasis of the walls is soothing, but the volume and textures is grating. It’s too harsh to be ambient, but too ambient to be jarring. It is serene agitation.

[4] HNW is not understood by most people, much like other radical art.

[5] I use the acronym H.N.W. because it’s a convenient shorthand and when others see it there is an implicit understanding of what to expect, broadly. I don’t mind using the genre name Harsh Noise Wall because that is exactly what it is.

[6] HNW is pure obsession.

[7] The sounds of machines are the sound of greed, consumption and erasure of humanity. They are employed as tools to extract from and devour the natural earth for profit. Recordings of machines are often used in my works, as a projection of inhumanity. HNW is probably the least “human” genre, with little or no hand guidance of the sound, or attempts at traditional artistry of sound. It is the closest thing to a machine-made sound.

[8] HNW helps our contradictions to be revealed.

[9] Monolithic Walls are closing in around us.

[10] The Future of HNW would be its transformation.

[11] The Death of HNW would be the beginning of something else—it would never really die, but just transform.

[12] HNW should be related to Dada to understand it better. Both Dada and HNW ignore traditional aesthetics and expectations; the idea to present pure static as sound art is the same as when a found urinal was presented as visual art.

[13] Singularity and Originality in HNW are rare, much as it is in any other genre.

[14] HNW should be called Static Minimalism, because the form is consistent with that description.

[15] HNW should not be called Static Minimalism, because it can be just as correct to call it Static Maximalism; it is also of excess, accumulation, and obsessiveness, where more is more.

[16] The permanent repetition of the HNW-Mantra (No ideas, no change, no dynamics, no development etc.) leads to complacency and redundancy. When it was first realized, it was the logical conclusion to the reductivist and minimalist approach to conceptualism, reached to its perfect end by Vomir. His anti-conceptualist manifesto was a deeply political statement, the socio-political allusions was lost on many in favor of a continuation of the fetishism of nihilism and of the void.

[17] Volume in HNW is necessary. Otherwise it would simply be ambient noise.

[18] Distortion in HNW is also an integral component; it helps provide the variety of textures; volume plus distortion is what constitutes harshness.

[19] My Unconscious is both soothed and energized in HNW.

[20] Narratives, Analogies and Metaphors in HNW are stepping stones to allow you to enter the void within the sound.

[21] Time and Space in HNW are both erased and expanded. The sustained dissonance tricks the perception by the ears and the mind.

[22] HNW reached a logical end with the idea of absolute Nothingness. The excavation left a giant hole, a blank slate, a tabula rasa for the reintroduction of new ideas.

 

[23] My HNW amplifies my politics.

[24] Minimal Music and Cosmic Drones are cousins of HNW, all of them branches off the same trunk of experimental music.

[25] Conceptualism is the future of HNW. Ever since Vomir reached the logical conclusion of reductivism and the pinnacle of anti-conceptualism, there is no other place to go but to build it back up with new ideas.

[26] The main ingredients of brilliant HNW are purity of vision.

[27] The purpose and the concept of my HNW are as criticism and protest. The walls of noise are a sonic and physical representation of the real walls surrounding us, at once a dissent against and a personification of the dark forces of greed, the concrete problems of urban development and living, and the social inequities of gentrification.

[28] The distinction between ANW / HNW is the gain and volume.

 

[29] The philosophy of HNW can change from person to person. HNW is a vessel for whatever anyone wants to project into it.

[30] My first words about HNW were this is a perfect statement.

[31] My final words about HNW would be to get ready to step into the final void.

[32] The phrase I would like to add to this questionary is reality is nothing and nothing is real.

Robert Smithson, Partial Buried Woodshed

Cordial thanks, Peter !
For further informations
Bandcamp is HERE 
Facebook is HERE

The HNW-Q No.8: Romain Perrot (Vomir)

 

Anish Kapoor - ‘descent into limbo’ (Kassel, 1992 )

Dear Readers,

I am very proud to present the HNW-Q No.8 featuring Romain Perrot also known as Vomir. I discovered his HNW in 2010 during a lengthy period of research for more recent and more radical forms of free form minimalism than those I have already encountered in the works of Giacinto Scelsi, Luigi Nono, Morton Feldman, Pauline Oliveros, Eliane Radigue, Helmut Lachenmann, James Tenney, John Cage, Walter Marchetti, John Cage and LaMonte Young. My desire for reasearch found further support in my deep interest in ascetic and anti-capitalist forms of thinking that I found at least methodologically embodied in the works of Martin Heidegger, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Meister Eckhart, Lao Tse, Dôgen Kigen and the Desert Fathers (from Ancient Egypt to Edmond Jabès) and also in certain forms of Modern Art represented in the works of Ad Reinhardt, Robert Ryman, Donald Judd and Barnett Newman.

Consequently it was only a question of time for me to discover the works of Romain Perrot (in my case "Renonce" and "Proanomie") that should be read and inscribed in these lines of tradition. Let's say - for the sake of simplicity: his works are post-Cage, post-Noise and post-Duchamp. Sadly, this background of HNW was not seen. The result: the HNW-brand was captured, ruined and nearly destroyed almost over night by brainless nerds with UKW-radios and tape-recorders and equally ill-informed self-proclaimed fanboynerds. Or by the countless others that wanted to pump in more content into HNW. How ridiculous, annoying, pointless and totally pathetic ! Nevertheless Vomir's HNW will remain as an immense and ultra-smart entry in the logbook of essential experimental music and noise (comparable maybe to the inventions of Hijokaidan, Incapacitants or Masami Akita). His HNW is not a petitesse. It is a mature and adult invention: nothing that could have been invented by a teenager. So please keep this in mind, that you have to grow up if you are into negations and negativity, because negations are worthless without (an in depth) knowledge of the negated and affirmations are equally worthless, if they remain unrelated to a well conceived set of negations.(I postpone the writing about Perrot's immense (also still unnoticed) scope of literary allusions that reaches from Hölderlin, Corneille, Céline to Ribemont-Dessaignes and perhaps secretly to Artaud, Bataille, Blanchot and Deleuze).

Yes. Perrot's HNW is radical, but not in the way it was usually perceived. His sounds are radically anti-capitalist, radically anti-communitarian and radically de-capitated. There is no HNW-movement and there will be never one: only disconnected bands of outsiders. His sounds are directed violently against the unconscious mantra of capitalism to dwell, own, consume and destroy. Perrot is consequently enough to fold this mantra repeatedly back against his own invention until there is nothing left to consume or to assume but absolute nothingness. Épater le bourgeois is no longer his point ! He is turning the usual idea of production and consumption upside down. Perrot produces like an anti-productive and anti-expressive factory or demonic force totally cut-off the market desiring to produce a commodity factor of zero and below. He is producing anti-matter (in all senses of this compositum). He is the non-master of anti-matter, of course, but he is very polite and generous as if he is whispering silently in the direction of the sounds: après vous ! The "listeners" are deliberately consumed and virtually destroyed by the sounds. And the sounds remain absolutely indigestible. This makes them look and sound under the capitalist optic at the same time totally useless and absolutely dangerous, because they interrupt und subvert all reasonable ideas of labour and connected ideas of shareholder value and material surplus value and consumption. (Maybe one could relate this to Georges Bataille's idea of an unrestricted economy and expenditure developed in "La notion de depense"(1933) and later in "La part maudite" (1949))

Perrot's HNW is outrageous - it atomizes everything - leaving behind only ashes and scars. His sounds are in a very radical sense non-directional, inaudible, indifferent, self-consuming and inexistent. They annihilate the subject of perception. These sounds are neither related to aesthetics nor to aesthetic judgements or systems. They are rather an excess for, or a collapse for the aesthetical apparatus or the senses themselves. Consequently it is (and should be) equally impossible to be a-part or to be no-part of the HNW-sound (cf. Bataille's idea of the proletariat as a part of no part). If you are still able to discern between sound and self you still have an aesthetic approach to HNW and you are still "listening" ! So even the formulation "I" listen to HNW is a ridiculous contradiction. Experiencing HNW is impossible and has to be a massive counter-experience. Counter-experiences are keeping the asymmetry alive between my conditions for reception and the anhuman or inhuman nothingness or abyssal otherness that appears to me (here !) as "sound".  

Without this radical asymmetry HNW would still be a part of the distractions of the global Kulturindustrie. Any attempt to re-fill HNW with aesthetic contents, intentions, or qualities is not HNW, but popmusic ! Real HNW is anti-aesthetic or better: anti-anti-aesthetic, because it is not related to aesthetical questions at all (e.g. is it loud enough ? is it ugly ? is it nice ? --- these are futile questions asked by idiots !). HNW is virtually in-finite, because it is "beyond" the perceptive horizons and cognitive possibilities of humans. HNW is beyond the programmable duality of expression-impression (cf. the title of his 2012 release Le Mur Bruitiste Est Non Programmable, Il A Une Fonction Heuristique: Il Révèle; Il Ne Représente Pas: Il Présente) This "beyond" could even open new channels for "perception" different to the industrialized programs that aim at a total "proletarianization of the sensibility" (Bernard Stiegler). Something of Perrot's deeply serious anti-anti-aesthetics embodies herself in the black plastic-bag Perrot wears over his head during his anti-performances with his back to the audience or simply lying on the floor. Perrot's "style of performance" as-if-already-dead could be deciphered with the help of Blanchot who once wrote: "Penser comme on meurt: sans but, sans pouvoir, sans unité (...) pensée de chaque côtée, en déséquilibre, en excès de sens et en excès sur le sens - sortie, dehors." And one last remark: only Perrot has the legitimate right to produce serially and almost automatically (maybe like On Kawara's daily paintings). This is his idea - he has invented it - and it will remain his idea.

In a way the photo (of an installation by Anish Kapoor) above visualizes Romain Perrot's initial idea: the desire to re-insert or fold-in a dangerous void in our homes and daily surroundings, that's desperately missing. This void is dangerous, because it is extimate (a neologism coined by Lacan) it is an intimate exteriority, an internal exclusion, or a foreign void at the heart of the familiar. If this void would not be something at the same time intimate and extimate - the void would have no interruptive force. The void has to interrupt "la société de contrôle" (a concept developped by Gilles Deleuze following a syntagma by William Burroughs and Michel Foucault's book "Surveiller et punir"). And in a way, Perrot desperately - but joyfully - seeks for nothing else but an absolute and resolute interruption of our daily, always already corrupted and exploited lifes. In a poem that accompanied his 2010 "master"piece "Renonce" we could or should have read: 

Quand je me retrouve
La solitude
Quand tout sont éloignés
La solitude pénétrante
Je me recroqueville dans le fini
Je me fige
Mon bruit interne me clarifie
Je suis pur

[written by SKG, 
21.2.-27.2.2015]

This is the HNW-Q No.8
brilliantly completed

by Romain Perrot:

The HNW-Q No. 8

[1] I discovered and invented HNW for myself, when I fully let built the sound I had in my head.

[2] The initial radicality of HNW would be preserved, if nothing happens.

[3] HNW is Harsh Noise Wall.

[4] HNW is not to have fun.

[5] I discovered the acronym H.N.W. on the releases from The Rita's label, Militant Walls.

[6] HNW is pure love, hate, magick, sex, witchcraft, giallo, nylon, reclusion.

[7] The sounds of machines are the streets, the futurist's music or from the industrial related culture.

[8] HNW helps the inner self to be revealed.

[9] Monolithic Walls are good experimental music.

[10] The Future of HNW would be no future.

[11] The Death of HNW would be in ecstasy.

[12] HNW should be related to harsh noise to understand it better.

[13] Singularity and Originality in HNW are none.

[14] HNW should be called Static Minimalism, because...

[15] HNW should not be called Static Minimalism, because static does not include necessarily harshness. HNW is no drone.

[16] The permanent repetition of the HNW-Mantra (No ideas, no change, no dynamics, no development etc.) leads to some rules I did put in my first manifesto. But that was not intended to become rules for the genre. I am no guide.

[17] Volume in HNW is of some effect.

[18] Distortion in HNW is a part of it.

[19] My Unconscious is comfortable in HNW.

[20] Narratives, Analogies and Metaphors in HNW are some possibilities.

[21] Time and Space in HNW are some possibilities.

[22] HNW is a possible way to absolute Nothingness.
 
[23] My HNW amplifies my mind.

[24] Minimal Music and Cosmic Drones are other genres of music, and Harsh Noise is the main genre of HNW.

[25] Conceptualism is the bad word of HNW.

[26] The main ingredients of brilliant HNW are static harsh noise.

[27] The purpose and the concept of my HNW are No ideas, no change, no dynamics, no development, in static harsh noise sounds.

[28] The distinction between ANW / HNW is in the harshness of the noise.

[29] The philosophy of HNW can change from one to one.

[30] My first words about HNW were 'static shit'. This is what I called my sounds before I embraced the HNW letters.

[31] My final words about HNW would be not now.

[32] The phrase I would like to add to this questionary is....
 

 Merci beaucoup, Romain !

Visit Romain's blog

HERE

Sounds Reviewed #6/2013: African Audio Documents - Effacer le Tableau

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Sounds Reviewed #6/2013

African Audio Documents - Effacer le tableau

(AAD01, CD-r, XI/2013)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

§1 An agencement - pour percer le mur.

Already a few minutes of attentive listening convinced me: this is really an awesome, baffling, mysterious and important release. It is a blast on all levels. Pierre Ndoki's "Effacer le tableau" (the first release of his project "African Audio Documents") combines serious aural research with poetic inventiveness and imagination that has no equal (cf. maybe it is comparable to Dominik Fernow's most recent project "Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement") . It brings the serious and essential minimalism back in. It is a hybrid, that re-connects and re-channels several important streams in modern Sound/Art from electro-acoustics, sound-installation, audio-documentary, minimal music, audio-auto-biographics, musique concrète and other relevant and serious forms of sonic spectrality, pure sounds and microtonality.

Already the poly-valent and clever use of the title "Effacer le tableau" shows that Ndoki knows what he is doing and aiming at. Effacer le tableau (putting the real meaning and its (brutal) african context aside for a moment) could be read as an audio-poetic imperative inviting the listener to put in brackets everything s/he thinks to know about sounds (mostly too much !). Effacer le tableau, premièrement ! Electro-Acoustic-Music and other forms of (Electro-)Minimalism need different and well trained listeners, because an unattentive, ill-informed and untrained listener is completely lost in this field of non-anthropomorphic sounds.

If you are willing to follow Pierre Ndoki's golden rule - Effacer le tableau, premièrement ! - listening could be the perfect tool to "percer le mur" (van Gogh) of representational ideas of sound and art in general. Eye-deology, so to speak. Helping to discover lines of flight out of the capitalist world of sound, music and visible commodities.

In this sense Deleuze/Guattari wrote in "Mille Plateaux": "L'art n'est jamais une fin, il n'est qu'un instrument pour tracer les lignes de vie, c'est-à-dire tous ces devenirs réels, qui ne se produisent pas simplement dans l'art, toutes ces fuites actives, qui ne consistent pas à fuir dans l'art, à se réfugier dans l'art, ces déterritorialisations positives, qui ne vont pas se reterritorialiser sur l'art, mais bien plutôt l'emporter avec elles, vers le régions de l'asignifiant, de l'asubjectif et du sans visage. (...) Défaire le visage, c'est la même chose que percer le mur du signifiant, sortir du trou noir de la subjectivité: cherchez vos trous noirs et vos murs blancs, connaissez-les, connaissez vos visages, vous ne les déferez pas autrement, vous ne tracerez pas autrement vos lignes de fuites."

"Effacer le tableau" is definitely a subtle composition: im-pressive, massive without mass (in the physical sense), an aural materiality without matter, vibrating, monochrome, imploding/exploding, thoughtfully folded back in time and space. 

§2 The Magic of Expectation: playing with masks

Relevant art is always a play with masks and background narratives - or call it the space for de-personalisation - ask Artaud, Nietzsche or Kierkegaard. Consequently it should be no surprise, that an artist deeply indebted to Africa - t h e  m a s k e d  a n d  v i r t u a l l y  u n k n o w n   c o n t i n e n t  p a r  e x c e l l e n c e  - uses masks and complex background narratives and artistical strategies in his project. This is by far one of the very few absolutely convincing HNW-background-narratives and conceptual framings that worked for me completely. It should be also mentioned, that the complete design and concept of the project is absolutely outstanding and thoughtful.

This is an ultra-poetic and thoughtful melting of form and content. Pierre Ndoki is opening all neurones of the brain for remembrance, reinscription, silence and, repetition. A short look on Ndoki's blog (click here) shows that his narrative and soundworld will expand thematically and aesthetically (see §11 of this review) in all kinds of directions. So it is really an intellectual pleasure for any future listener to un-pack all the intricacies and implications of this project.

Since my blog is build as a landing site for all kinds of surprising and refreshing artifacts, I was very glad, that Ndoki contacted me to sent the first parts of his immense audio-poetic invention. Ndoki shows that HNW (= as always this blog uses this acronym for serious Electro-Acoustic-Minimalism only and for nothing else ) is not a style. It is from time to time (!) a neccessary tool for deeply thoughtful and private expressions produced by artists that keep the dimension of futurity open ....  

§3 Afrikanische Spiele / Jeux Africains / Somber dreams

Pierre Ndoki's African Audio Documents invites you to experience your own innermost and outermost - intimate and extimate - Africa. An artificial implant - because there is no Africa as such. But he also relates your imaginary or imagined Africa to the horrors of the most recent history of Africa. So it is really rewarding (if not essential) to follow all the traces Ndoki has laid out so carefully. There is a real historical background behind all his recordings. It is one of the most carefully and thoughtfully conceived HNW-projects - so pay attention !

So please take the name of his project African Audio Documents seriously. But draw the conclusions yourself ! And please try to enrich your image of Africa with books like Raymond Roussel's "Impressions d'Afrique" (1910), Michel Leiris's "L'Afrique fantôme" (1934), the artworks and theories of Jean Dubuffet, the last dreams of Arthur Rimbaud, Joseph Conrad,  or to give a more recent example Yannick Haenel's novel "Les renard pâles" (2013) based on a central-myth of an african tribe called the Dogon.

For me, the release "Effacer le tableau", was a good opportunity to revisit the famous novel "Afrikanische Spiele" by Ernst Jünger written in 1936. It is about a very young man dreaming of discovering "his" Africa, the river Nil and the Congo. In a key passage Ernst Jünger wrote: "Es gibt eine Zeit, in der dem Herzen das Geheimnisvolle nur räumlich, nur auf weissen Flecken der Landkarte erreichbar erscheint und in der alles Dunkle und Unbekannte eine mächtige Anziehung ausübt. Lange, halb trunkene Wachträume während meiner nächtlichen Spaziergänge durch den Stadtwall hatten mir jene entfernten Länder so nahegerückt, dass nur noch der Entschluss in sie einzudringen und ihrer Genüsse teilhaftig zu sein. Mich zog vielmehr eine Zone an, in der der Kampf menschlicher Gewalten rein und zwecklos zum Ausdruck kam. Auch die zweite Nacht verbrachte ich auf meinem Segeltuch. Früh wurde ich von Benoit geweckt; er forderte mich auf, Afrika zu sehen."

Ndoki delivers somber dreams of dark continents: it is a "double promenade (...) le voyage extérieur géographique des distances indecomposables, le voyage historique intérieur suivant des intensités enveloppantes. (...) elle porte le réel hors de son principe où il est exactement produit par la machine désirante." (Anti-Oedipe, 104).

§4 The Dogon-Egg: Intensities 

The crisp minimalism of "Effacer le tableau" opens and amplifies feverish fantasies and daydreams. It is a pure cerebral music with a massive narrative floating in between the sounds like in the Dogon-Egg:

(L'oeuf de dogon et la répartition d'intensités,)

§5 L'homme au point zéro / Humanity at point zero

Sadly the image of the cradle and point-zero of civilisation co-incide in "Africa". "Africa" could also be seen as an reflecting image of European underworlds and hells. Look at "Africa" and tell me what you see ? Somber and uncanny dreams of a violent Africa are evoked on "Effacer le tableau" and the subsequent releases. To call this a documentary about an African tragedy would be an insult and a sedative, because it projects worn european theatrical forms on real exploitation, violence and poverty. Something else it at work here.

In an essay with the title "L'homme au point zéro" written by the french poet-thinker Maurice Blanchot dedicated to his (then deceased) friend Georges Bataille we can read the lines: "Monde barbare, sans respect, sans humanité. Il nous vide atrocement de tout ce que nous aimons et aimons être, nous chasse du bonheur de nos refuges, du faux-semblant de nos vérités, détruit ce à quoi nous appartenons et parfois se détruit lui-même. Effrayante épreuve. Mais cette contestation, précisement parce qu'elle nous laisse pauvre de tout, sauf de la puissance, nous donne peut-être aussi la chance qui accompagne toute rupture : quand on est contraint de renoncer à soi, il faut périr ou commencer ; périr afin de recommencer. Tel serait alors le sens de la tâche que représente le mythe de l'homme sans mythe: l'espoir, l'angoisse et l'illusion de l'homme au point zéro" (Maurice Blanchot, L'homme au point zéro).

A few lines to support the intricacies of the poetic-audio-documentary character of the project "African Audio Documents" - and something to think about, when you listen attentively.

§6 Grids and Frames

The crisp, rigorously de-naturalized and dry sounds on "Effacer le tableau" work like a kind of contrast-liquid, or conceptual grid or frame to open a more artificial and sophisticated TIME/SPACE-articulation. Making the medium of sound - the air or simply matter if you like - nearly tactile and visible. These sounds  point towards a tension between visibility, tactility and audibility. This recording is relevant, because it opens a huge space in which prominent ideas of the anti-mimetic character of modern art could resonate. This recordings delivers also very good arguments to re-inscribe HNW into the history of radical minimalism and anti-mimetism in the Fine Arts (let's say at least since Mondrian) and spectral, micro-tonal, electronic and electro-acoustic music. HNW is not a derivative of HN. PERIOD.

In her now famous paper on "Grids" the american art-historian Rosalind Krauss wrote: "There are two ways in which the grid functions to declare the modernity of modern art. One is spatial; the other is temporal. In the spatial sense, the grid states the autonomy of the realm of art. Flattened, geometricized, ordered, it is antinatural, antimimetic, antireal. It is what art looks like when it turns its back on nature. In the flatness that results from its coordinates, the grid is the means of crowding out the dimensions of the real and replacing them with the lateral spread of a single surface. 

In the overall regularity of its organization, it is the result not of imitation, but of aesthetic decree. Insofar as its order is that of pure relationship, the grid is a way of abrogating the claims of natural objects to have an order particular to themselves; the relationships in the aesthetic field are shown by the grid to be in a world apart and, with respect to natural objects, to be both prior and final. The grid declares the space of art to be at once autonomous and autotelic. 

In the temporal dimension, the grid is an emblem of modernity by being just that: the form that is ubiquitous in the art of our century, while appearing nowhere, nowhere at all, in the art of the last one. In that great chain of reactions by which modernism was born out of the efforts of the nineteenth century, one final shift resulted in breaking the chain. By "discovering" the grid, cubism, de Stijl, Mondrian, Malevich . . . landed in a place that was out of reach of everything that went before. Which is to say, they landed in the present, and everything else was declared to be the past.

If we open any tract - Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art or The Non- Objective World, for instance - we will find that Mondrian and Malevich are not discussing canvas or pigment or graphite or any other form of matter. They are talking about Being or Mind or Spirit. From their point of view, the grid is a staircase to the Universal, and they are not interested in what happens below in the Concrete. Or, to take a more up-to-date example, we could think about Ad Reinhardt who, despite his repeated insistence that "Art is art," ended up by painting a series of black nine-square grids in which the motif that inescapably emerges is a Greek cross. " (Rosalind Krauss 1979)

Keep this in mind - when you listen to Pierre Ndoki's "African Audio Documents". His works are a constant play with framings and un-framings, focussing and un-focussing. An elegant floating in between thinking and listening, inside and outside: a conceptual grid or filter-system that's moving through space and time enflaming dark fantasies and desperate awakenings. 

§7 Electro-acoustic textures - Essential minimalism.

Pierre Ndoki's project "African Audio Documents" is an essential and serious research in the field of electronic and electro-acoustic minimalism. It could be easily reconnected to the contemporary non-anthropomorphic soundworlds of Carsten Nicolai, Ryoji Ikeda, Emptyset, Eleh, Basic House, the sadly deceased Zbigniew Karkowski, Francisco López to name a few - but also to the worlds of the classical minimalisms of Eliane Radigue, Pauline Oliveros, Edgard Varèse, Gottfried Michael Koenig, Pierre Schaeffer, Karlheinz Stockhausen, LaMonte Young, Walter Marchetti, Luigi Nono, Giacinto Scelsi, etc, etc. [All references are deliberately chosen from different contextes to open the eyes and ears for different viewpoints and to extract essential soundworlds out of the context of the "noise-scene" (for me a deeply pejorative and useless term)]

This project understands that sounds are absolutely non-anthropomorph, non-natural, non-related to the interiority of the listener or the composer, rigorously non-mimetic - they are almost like colours in monochrome or abstract paintings. There are no natural receptors for sounds or pre-given, pre-configured , symmetrical human correlates to sound-emissions. But who stated that sounds are related to humans - alone ? The late capitalist music-industry, who else ? Obviously it is not enough to have ears to listen - listening is a question of training - like everything else. There are no guarantees here: Whoever has ears ought to hear ! 

§8 Subtle Bass-Undercurrents.

If you are the owner of a multi-speaker soundsystem with a seperate subwoofer please play it in 3D Surround. Press play and switch-off the lights. Let the composition resculpture and alter the Time-Space of your room ... bass .... slumbering bass .... subtle bass-undercurrents ... out of my subwoofers .... so cleary composed com-ponents ... never heard something like this before ... bass at the edge of existence ... nearly unperceivable .... at certain volumes carved out .... like a stone ....

Like a good monochrome - or a so called abstract painting - the composition reacts. It has different effects on the listener if you experiment in terms of loudness or volume. I would prefer the term "volume" because it is more related to the space in which the sound is played in. It describes the extension (also a title of a marvellous composition by the german composer Mathias Spahlinger) of the effect the sound has in a given room. 

"Effacer le tableau" focusses on the aesthetic aspects of resonance, time, sound and listening. It is no secret that this blog is seriously (!) interested in the research of basic acoustic phenomena at the edge to be perceived as "music". This blog is a plea to discover the complete sonic field without any reserves. This record here is a good exemple for an absolutely sensitive musician ! This is a recording you will listen to more than once - absolutely exceptional in this field ! 

§9 Explosante-fixe et magique-circonstancielle

Another collector of African Art, the french poet and father of surrealism André Breton wrote in the final passage of his book "Amour fou":

"La beauté convulsive sera érotique-voilée, 

explosante-fixe, magique-circonstancielle, ou ne sera pas".

Take this as a hint when you listen to Pierre Ndoki's soundworlds frequently and attentively ! This is also the title of a brilliant composition by Pierre Boulez - risk an ear ... or two ! By the way the acronym A.A.D. for African Audio Documents points also back to the good old days when analog recordings and codes were recoded or transcoded into digital CD-codes. One of the codes was A-nalog A-nalog D-igital - which meant analog source, analog mixing, digital recoding. Another proof for the deeply thoughtful character of this project ... 

§10 Effacer le tableau: an African Aural Suprematism.

"Effacer le tableau" is the starting point for an African Aural Suprematism. In a famous passage written by one of the "fathers" of Suprematism Kasimir Malevich distinguishes two basic types of creation: "one, initiated by the conscious mind, serves practical life, so-called, and deals with concrete visual phenomena; the other, stemming from the subconscious or superconcious mind, stands apart from all practical utility and treats abstract phenomena" (Malevich, The Non-Objective World). Abstract phenomena are related to the ineffable. The primary goal of suprematist art is to provide the occasion for the latter form of awareness in the viewer to appear by evoking the ineffable. The experience of the ineffable helps to overcome the plagues of representation and mimesis. Since the awareness of the infinite is sub- or super-conscious, it cannot be represented figuratively but must be presented nonobjectively.

It should be obvious, that Ndoki's work "Effacer le tableau" is informed by all the intricacies of Modern Avantgarde Abstractionism(s) and Minimalism(s). I would even risk to say, that he takes the suprematist abstraction on step further from the visual to the aural and from Europe to Africa - that's the reason why I would like to call his Sound-Aesthetics an "African Aural Suprematism". In the words of Malevich again: "The black square on the white field was the first form in which non-objective feeling came to be expressed. The black square = feeling, the white field = the void beyond this feeling" (Malevich, The Non-Objective World).

So please follow the radicalized minimalism(s) of Ndoki and cut off the ear from the eye ! Let the frequencies alone structure your "thoughts" - let them effacer le tableau ... black and white, white and black, white on black, black on white, zeros and ones, ones and zeros, zeros projected on ones, ones projected on zeros - contrasts .... and primordial differences ... this piece ought to be imagined to have been played in a remote cabin made of clay with flickering rests of electricity causing these sounds - morse-codes from an abyssal Inner-Outer-Africa. Or maybe a secretly registered concussion, or repercussion of age old earthquakes, or cochlea-memories from an antilope.

This is really an Abstract-Anti-Expressionism - open only for a different plane of consciousness - close to Malevich's, Artaud's and Deleuze/Guattari's ideas of it. Antonin Artaud wrote in this sense in his famous text "Les Tarahumaras" quoted and included in an important passage of "Mille Plateaux": "Artaud pèse et mesure chaque de ses mots: la conscience "sait ce qui est bon pour elle et ce qui ne lui vaut rien. (...) Elle sait surtout jusqu'où va son être, et jusqu'où il n'est pas encore allé (...) Plan où la conscience normale atteint pas mais où Ciguri nous permet d'atteindre, et qui est le mystère même de toute poésie. Mais il ya dans l'être humain un autre plan celui-là obscur, informe, où la conscience n'est pas entrée, mais qui l'entoure comme un prolongement inéclairci ou d'une menace suivant le cas. Et qui dégage aussi des sensations aventureuses, des perceptions"(Les Tarahumaras). [...] Ce n'est plus un Moi qui sent, agit, et se rappelle, c'est "une brume brillante, une buée jaune et sombre", qui a des affects et éprouve des mouvements, des vitesses." (Mille Plateaux).

§11 Une cartographie africaine, un voyage sur place

The best you can say about soundworlds is that they travel to your ears and make you travel accordingly. These soundworlds are like soundcards from strange, unknown continents. Pierre Ndoki's Sound-Art project African Audio Documents is such a project of multi-dimensional soundcards (understood in analogy to postcards) he sends us from "his" "Africa".

Soundcards are game-cards and geo-graphic, geo-politic and geo-aesthetic cards at once. These cards are not re-productive or re-presentational. They are productive. They produce the territory in the act of description or transcription. A card - write Deleuze/Gauttari: "ne reproduit pas un inconscient fermé sur lui-même, elle le construit. Elle concourt à la connexion des champs, au déblocage des corps sans organes, à leur ouverture maximum sur un plan de consistance. Elle fait elle-même partie du rhizome" (Mille Plateaux).

In this sense Pierre Ndoki's project African Audio Documents delivers a complex audio-haptico-spiritual-fictional cartography of Africa - no more, no less. It is an intriguing complex of real facts from the most recent entanglement of African-French and African history, feverish dreams of somber continents, and subtle audio-poetic-reflections about the nature and conditions of minimal electro-acoustic soundworlds.

Ndoki's soundcards open up immense and unheard of possibilities of immobile voyages. His soundcards let secrets travels through the labyrinths of your cochlea supported by uncertain and risky "musical" forms and frequencies. "Voyage sur la place, c'est le nom de toutes le intensités, même si elles se developpent aussi en extension. Penser, c'est voyager (...) Voyager en lisse c'est tout un devenir, et encore un devenir difficile, incertain." (Mille Plateaux).

During the writing of this review Pierre Ndoki was so kind to provide me with the three subsequent releases of his immense project African-Audio-Documents  entitled "Cellule Africaine" (AAD02, CD-r, 40 min.), "Hermetica"(AAD05, Mini-CD-r, 10 min. ) and "Loi fondamentale" (AAD04, CD-r, 50 min.).The spectrum goes from raw analogue HNW ("Cellule Africaine"), to an intricate Audio-Documentary-Sound-Collage ("Hermetica") or fantastic Electro-Acoustic-Minimalism ("Loi fondamentale").

Since this blog is a voice for the singular and the unique, it would be a violation of my own working principles to treat these three releases in an overhasted manner. Each of these releases would deserve an attentive listener and a different review. As you can see Effacer le tableau is the starting point of one of the most interesting, inventive, fascinating and conceptually thick and strong projects in HNW. It is a  strong recabling  of Electro-Acoustic-Minimalism(s) with other Avantgarde-Sound-Art-Formats. It will be surprising and rewarding to watch this rhizome grow over the next years ! A quote from the first e-mail Ndoki sent me, gives a good summary of his ideas:

"I have ties to the African Continent and as time went by I found out that HNW was the best way for me to express the different thoughts and emotions that arose in me when confronted to the violent magic of Africa."

(10/10 Admiration-Points)

(written by S.K.G., XI-XII.2013)

African Audio Documents
Effacer le tableau 
(AAD01, CD-r, XI/2013)

Support and contact 
Pierre Nkodi
here and here

Highest possible recommendation !

The HNW-Q No.6: Grégory Henrion

(Mur blanc - trou noir)

Dear Readers,

this is the sixth installment of the HNW-Q. I am very proud, that one of my favorite HNW-artists from France Grégory Henrion (the second one is of course Vomir) known for his awesome and always intriguing pure sounds embodied as Angström (or in short Å) one of the best HNW-projects on this planet agreed to complete it. He is also the head of the important label "Anarchofreaks Production" (click here - to see what's planned, what's available and here to listen) and the main organizer of the first two European HNW Fests. The next event organized partly by Henrion will be "Bruitisme" on 27.July 2013 in Maxeville, France "un journée autour de l' improvisation et de la liberté" (click here for informations). The Anarchofreaks label supported many interesting artists (to name a few): the absolutely fantastic poly-textured Gluttoness - Black Massive (2012), one giant-size Vomir- Tape-collection (I missed, sadly) (2012), one of the first Static Mantra releases, Bördel Noir - Hors (2012) and a lot more, but take a look yourself. 

It is especially thrilling to read Henrion's version of the HNW-Q in comparison to the one completed by James Killick (click) a few days ago. It is a good depiction of the musical janushead of HNW or of the inner tensions the HNW-sound seems to contain, always already somewhere in-between: embodiment  or disembodiment. [As a consequence of this originary split, fissure or bifurcation in HNW I have split my review section into "Remarkable HNW-Albums" and "Remarkable Sound-Art-Oddities" a few months ago to treat both tendencies as conceptual and reflected as possible with an appropriate hermeneutical grid.]

Since the beginning it was perfectly clear for me, that Henrion is the most important interpreter, translator and performer in the tradition of Vomir's now classical and unbeatable idea of european HNW as a "secular monestary"(cf. Perrot in: The Wire and my own text about this complex, click here). I can say without further restrictions, that I have discovered HNW in its original form through the lenses and musical prisms invented and provided by Grégory Henrion and Roman Perrot (maybe the inventors and katalysators of HNW). In a certain sense this is still HNW for me. Their sounds are in a certain sense unbeatable, untouchable -- a "counter-eternal" formulation of the HNW-sound: “monde noir, désert croissant: une machine solitaire ronfle sur la plage, une usine atomique installé dans le désert” (Deleuze/Guattari).

Grégory Henrion's HNW is HNW in nuce - in a nutshell, in a capsule, in an (en)closed chamber -- created necessarily in a serial form. Angström's works are physical excercises in pleasure and pain at once - serious lessons to learn to be oneself without being related to others - free singularities in a community without unity - maybe close to what Gilles Deleuze once called an "anarchie couronnée". A deliberate and resolute step towards seclusion and retreat - in this sense foremost made for himself and not directed to others. "Nothing, after all, might be nothing other than nothing. Perhaps transparency allows one to "see" the void, that is blinding and "hear" the silence that is defeaning. (...) The question that remains is how to build a void that is not a plenum but a trace of the void. To fashion such a void would be to construct nothing or beinahe nichts",  like Mark C. Taylor wrote once. 

In this sense Angström's HNW is strictly non-related to any form of interiority, of creativity and of "self-realization" in Art ! (cf. the german concept-artist Gerhard Merz Video posted yesterday, or click here). That's what I would call the strong and serious modernist orientation of this form of HNW - anything that could be a reminder or residue of playfulness or content is in brackets here. How it is related to the idea of the sublime - rests to be examined. Consequently it wouldn't be difficult to rhizomize Angström's sounds with the classics of modern art (from Mies van der Rohe, Mondrian, Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt, Walter de Maria, Mark Rothko, Donald Judd to name a few). 

If I had to write about Angström's HNW (what will happen here on my blog sooner or later) I would relate it to more ideas taken from Mille Plateaux by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. In Mille Plateaux D/G have conceptualized music as a war machine against the state apparatus and its binary political logic of inclusion and exclusion, majority and minority and so on. For them music is considered capable of a total deterritorialisation, which means music has the force to restructure and break the conceptual apparatus of the state, which mainly has to do with identity-politics. Art in general and music could and should restructure society according to the deleuzian concept of a "devenir-imperceptible". For this purpose, as they write in MP: "Il est évident qu'il faut un son très pur et simple, une émission ou une onde sans harmoniques, pour que le son voyage et qu'on voyage autour du son(réussite de LaMonte Young à cet égard).C'est seulement quand la matière est suffisamment déterritorialisée qu'elle fait surgir elle-même comme moleculaire, et fait surgir de pures forces." and furthermore: "un bloc sonore, qui n'a plus de point d'origine, puisqu'il est toujours déjà au milieu de la ligne, qui n'a plus de coordonnées horizontales et verticales, puisqu'il crée ses propres coordinées, qui ne forme plus de liaison localisable d'un point à un autre, puisqu'il est dans un temps non pulsé: un bloc rythmique déterritorialisé, abandonnant points coordonées et mesure, comme un bateau ivre qui se confond lui-même avec la ligne, ou qui trace un plan de consistance" (D/G, Mille Plateaux).

If you are willing to accept the aforementioned as a backdrop - you can see, that Henrion's HNW is important for anyone really interested in the classic HNW-sound. I remember quite well - to put it in a more anecdotical manner - that my first four HNW-purchases were Angström's "unchanging insurrectional Harsh Noise Walls" (quote from the backcover of "Que crève") "Trépanation" (2010) and "Écartèlement" (2010) from the charmingly entitled 4-CD-Box "Pus" (AFP 2010) and his "Que crève la vieux monde"(Toxic Industries, Xi011, 2010) together with Romain Perrot's landmark pieces Renonce and Proanomie. I was intrigued and thrilled immediately (so I can only recommend to all you newbies in HNW to get a copy of these four recordings). Henrion's HNW-works are definitely always a good starting and ending point (if you are interested in ouroboric or self-reflexive images) - to memorize, incorporate and embody (almost like a "monk" from an anarchic order) the HNW-trias: purity - minimalism - seclusion over and over and over and over again ! HNW is HNW - and everything else is everything else (to modulate a famous sentence by Ad Reinhardt).

Later on I purchased everything from Angström: from "c'est toi le maître, c'est toi le criminel, et, ironie, c'est toi l'esclave, c'est toi la victime" (AFP 2010, on BAVE, the collection - that put France on the HNW-map), "Billot" (AFP 2011), "Untitled I,II " (Sweet Solitude 2011), "La chute des anges rebelles" (Slow Death 2011), "Toute une histoire" (Victimology Rec. 2011) , "Noire" (AFP2013, sadly sold out too fast for me), to "Néant hors du vide"(on the canadian B.C.R.-label 2012) and the impressive both sonically and conceptually "Enfermement" (AFP 2012 - part of the HNW-Swap 2012/13, download here). 

If you risk a look at his blog, his bandcamp-site - you can get an impression of this great HNW-artist. So if you don't have Angström on your list or map yet - please give yourself a try and support this great HNW-artist from France  - it is always a hit and never a miss !

P.S. If you are interested in the main ideas of the HNW-Q please consult all earlier versions or the main page - here you find a more general descrition of it. It should be clear how it works - now - so the general text is not reproduced here again! - click here for further informations [SKG]

This is the HNW-Q No.6 brilliantly completed 
by Grégory Henrion:

The HNW-Q No.6:

[1] I discovered and invented HNW for myself, when I discovered Vomir and this mix between noise and minimalism.

[2] The initial radicality of HNW would be preserved, if there was an inquisition but it may be too late.

[3] HNW is noise purity and love of isolation.

[4] HNW is not with variation.

[5] I…………………….. the acronym H.N.W. ………………

[6] HNW is pure isolation by noise.

[7] The sounds of machines are repetitive.

[8] HNW helps the nothingness to be revealed.

[9] Monolithic Walls are submission to noise.

[10] The Future of HNW would be the end of HNW.

[11] The Death of HNW would be the democratization, the vulgarization, the poularization of HNW and/or the end of Vomir.

[12] HNW should be related to isolation to understand it better.

[13] Singularity and Originality in HNW are ............................

[14] HNW should be called Static Minimalism, because ..........

[15] HNW should not be called Static Minimalism, because H means Harsh.

[16] The permanent repetition of the HNW-Mantra (No ideas, no change, no dynamics, no development etc. ) leads to fullness, plenitude, calm.

[17] Volume in HNW is essential.

[18] Distortion in HNW is essential.

[19] My Unconscious is…………………………….. in HNW.

[20] Narratives, Analogies and Metaphors in HNW are superflux. 

[21] Time and Space in HNW are nonexistent, outdated, obsolete.

[22] HNW leads to absolute Nothingness.

[23] My HNW amplifies my misanthropy, my individualism.

[24] Minimal Music and Cosmic Drones are sweat and psychedelic versions of HNW.

[25] Conceptualism is the …………………………… of HNW.

[26] The main ingredients of brilliant HNW are when you forget everything, when you abandon.

[27] The purpose and the concept of my HNW are oblivion, fall in nothingness, to cut yourself off from the rest of the world, from the outside.

[28] The distinction between ANW / HNW is simply the distinction between A(mbiant) and H(arsh).

[29] The philosophy of HNW can change nothing.

[30] My first words about HNW were static, violence, minimalism and Vomir.

[31] My final words about HNW would be nothingness, loneliness, forgetting.

[32] The phrase I would like to add to this questionary is «Make noise for yourself.»

Thanks a lot to Grégory Henrion - for his version of the HNW-Q

Cordial thanks for keeping HNW pure, minimal, monolithic and non-anthropomorph !.

Contact here and listen here