Everything merges (with MUTEK)
MUTEK 2005, June 1-5
We are awash in digital music/media festivals here in Montreal. What with the recent Elektra festival, MUTEK on the horizon, and Montréal Électronique Groove awaiting us this fall, not to mention the off-season events that they and other organizations all generate, it seems we can't get enough of the stuff.
Though Elektra and MUTEK (Music, Sound and New Technologies), both now in their sixth year, have similar approaches in showcasing digital culture, only MUTEK presents to its audience a current and complete vision of the range of digital arts as they are developing. Though not really promoted as a "festival of electronic music" per se, it is the live dj-ing and club events that are still its main draw, with established acts like Biosphere and Monolake headlining. But perhaps more than any other festival in this city, MUTEK offers the possibility of creative and collaborative work among attendees.
MUTEK lasts only five days - but what they manage to pack in over that time! Getting a handle on this unwieldy fest takes a bit of advance planning. An overview of the events:
• Ex-Centris series
Included is the aforementioned Biosphere: a marriage of multimedia forms with a performance "evoking the isolated nordic horizons" of his home country (Norway).
• Nocturne series
These experimental evenings at the Just for Laughs "museum", start late and go later. With, among others, Austrian performers Radian, and Germany's Marcus Schmickler.
The stark and cavernous Métropolis will host the most overtly club-like soirée of this part of the festival on June 4 with Swiss group Gallopierende Zuversicht, Vancouver's Mathew Jonson, and others.
The closing Nocturne night has the dub/house/soul/kitchen sink stylings of Nego Moçambique from Brazil.
• Le Placard, June 2-4, Just for Laughs museum.
Part of the "festival within a festival" phenomenon that is more and more common in Montreal. Unedited/unrestricted electronic music transmitted via headphones and live on the Web. This event of Parisian-origin is simulcast on the internet at the MUTEK site and at Le Placard.
• MUTEK_Intersection, June 1-3, Hotel Godin
If there were any doubt, this segment of the festival justifies the existence of the whole thing. This series of panels and workshops have been remarkably well-attended in the past, revealing as they do the particular social nature of electronic music and culture and its emphasis on the transmission of ideas. Check back at the MUTEK site for more information on the lineup and topics.
• Musée d'Art contemporain
Montreal duo Skoltz_Kolgen present their new project Askaa at the museum over several days; a hybrid performance/installation which will feed off audience interaction and the input of live artists. This could prove to be, one hopes, an interesting expansion of MUTEK into the territory of what was once called performance art (with its own definitions of multimedia).
• Mutek@Piknik
MUTEK merges once again with Piknik Electronik for this popular, relaxed outdoor daytime event which does for club-goers what the Tam-tams do for hippies. Perhaps even more so. Sunday, June 5, 1 pm at Place de l'Homme (parc Jean-Drapeau, Île Ste-Hélène)
The 6th edition of MUTEK takes place June 1-5, 2005 at Ex-Centris, Metropolis, the Musée d'Art contemporain, the Just for "Laughs" museum, Parc Jean-Drapeau, and other venues.
Info / Tickets: 514-651-2030
Elektra reviewed in brief
The niche of the Elektra festival is ostensibly to explore the merging of electronic music and the visual arts, with big name electronica acts like Autechre and Front 242, an array of multimedia performers, and a lecture or two all jammed together over six days (May 10-15).
But since these events occur as discrete performances at different times and often in different venues, and without much real interactivity - just the common rubric of a "festival" - it is difficult to see how organizers plan on furthering this collaborative aim.
The Autechre show on May 10, for instance, had no visual component at all - unless absence of light itself constitutes a statement.
It was at times an interesting spectacle, but mostly Autechre offered up excruciatingly subtle manipulations of percussive effects and looped melodies that didn't engage or fascinate. Instead, they imposed the novel sensation of being strapped to a conveyer belt in an industrial factory of unknown and hideous design and being methodically processed. Whether this is a bad thing is another question.
A couple of glow sticks and zombie-like concertgoers squatting near the massive PA cabinets showed that echoes of the rave/house/techno scene still reverberate here, however faintly.
However, Rafael Lazano-Hemmer's installation Frequency and Volume at the Musée d'Art contemporain was a hi-tech masterpiece. Shadows of spectators are digitally traced on walls as they enter the environment, with the collective noise of urban airwaves keyed interactively to each. The sonic traffic from passing taxis, cell phones, and radio stations shift and blend with our movements.
Elsewhere, in the "Couloir des pas perdus" of Place des Arts, Les Platinistes Numériques also used the involvement of spectators for the event Vétroy. An array of monochrome televisions sensitive to the movements and noises of the crowd affect the images displayed and generate new and ever-changing sound environments on the spot.
Summing up, Elektra seems a kind of a "MUTEK-lite", a warm-up to the denser and richer event further down the festival road, but containing interesting possibilities nonetheless.
l'OFF stays on track
Eine Kleine Pan Music
Blowout at the MEG
Cocktail groove
An interview with The Raelettes