
Talk by Alan Cummings: A personal history of the Japanese Underground
Alan Cummings
Talk charting the radical history of experimental music in Japan + the lowdown into the careers of many of the artists appearing at MLFC.
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Talk charting the radical history of experimental music in Japan + the lowdown into the careers of many of the artists appearing at MLFC.
The Songspiels take on a mode of musical theatre developed by playwright Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill in the early twentieth century, presenting political and social concerns through the accessible and (often funny) form of song.
Instead of the one-way monologue of normal performance, what would be the result of an actual collective dialogue? Where would it go?
A silent performance of (musical) reverberation.
Somewhere between performance, stripped down theatre and an intense kind of public learning or maybe even a public hearing.
The production of moving image (film) by the mechanically, unfalteringly repetitive manipulation of mass-produced materials (film), in order to explore three different allegorical representations (films) of repetitive human actions and labour under capital.
Michael Colligan pressing white hot metal into dry ice, causing the metal to sing and scream.
Out of a dark haze, shafts of light emerge, as the emulsion is scratched from the surface of the film. Simultaneously, out of the black silence, noise and audible scratches bloom into a bright drone.
A sound of buzzing and flickering metallic drones, glottal stops and guttural growls, and also an explosiveness and purity of sound that reminds you as much of Bill Dixon as anyone else.
A loud, buzzing stew of electrical light as noise and convulsive electric guitar squall.
Jandek’s second ever live performance, and the first to be advertised in advance.
The Experimental Improvisers Association of Japan, [EXIAS-J] are a loose collective of musicians and dilettantes who seem to represent an entire and self sufficient scene in one band.