Tuesday 14 May 2024, 7.30pm
Tuesday 14 May
- Seijiro Murayama (snare+voice) / Jean-Luc Guionnet (alto sax) - duo
- Lucien Rapilly (electronics) - solo
- Structure Couple (Christophe Macé / Lotus Edde Khouri / Jean-Luc Guionnet) - sound, dance and music
Three-Day residency with the great Parisian artist, Jean-Luc Guionnet, whose practice encompasses composition, improvisation, filmmaking, and philosophy. Approaching his instruments as imperfect vehicles of artificial intelligence, his attentive engagement applies speculative pressure to the expressive limits of their material properties. In his hands, design flaws and repressed qualities transform into catalysts for novel sonic emanations, and the simplest of processes are mobilized to extract infinitesimal acoustic detail. Although a formidable solo performer, Guionnet is no stranger to collaboration, something which the range of artists involved across these three days testifies to.
"I want these three days to be something like an knotwork or an interlace — but I like the knot ! — of times, practices, and friendships. I also wanted to invit artists who rarely or never played in Oto.
So, a knotwork of différent stories : from Stevie I first saw with Machine for Making Sense in the 90's to to Lucien with who I worked on the composition Plafond de Verre with the Lunar Error Ensemble in 2018. From the wordy performance of Andrew to the full of sense and non-sense abstraction in the composition we worked on, with Cristian on the acoustic guitar : Table de Poussières (Table for Dust). From the all life long, 1986…, friendship, artistic exchanges and collaborations with Christophe to the crossing roams with Fritz. The everyday collaboration with Lotus. The rare but back in the days music we do together with Jean-Philippe : Angle 4. And then, the endless spiral of the duet with Seijiro… which will be the first concert of all.
There will probably happen dancing on the spot, instrumental performance, up to down duets, rage together with the machine, speculative gesture, up side down old settings in solos… but many other things, that's for sure." – Jean-Luc Guionnet
"My musical work subdivides itself into as many ways as occasions arise for me to think and act with sound and forms. Those occasions have always to do with a strong meeting with an outside element : an instrument (saxophone/organ), a theoretical idea (what is "rumour"?), and mainly a collaborating friend (Lotus Edde Khouri, Éric La Casa, Thomas Bonvalet, Seijiro Murayama) ... or the long term adventure of a team (Hubbub, Ames Room, Jupiter Terminus ...). There then follows a collection of themes which, in turn, influence the evolution of the musical work and define the direction of meetings to come: the thickness of the air, the pidgin, the musical instrument considered as affective automaton, sound as a signature of space, signature of objects, signature of what it is not... The coming emotion is made out of all these strata and the sliding of one over the other during the act of listening. When music is giving time."
Percussionist Seijiro Murayama was born in 1957 in Nagasaki, Japan. He started performing improvised music in 1972, under some influence of Vinko Globokar and musicologist Fumio Koizumi. After graduated from Tokyo University in 1982 in Urdu studies he toured the USA with Keiji Haino as part of the seminal psychedelic band Fushitsusha. Returning to Japan after a period in NYC he continued playing drums and electronics in K.K. Null‘s noise/rock band A.N.P. (Absolut Null Punkt), while further exploring free improvisation. A relocation to France in 1999 led to collaborations that extended into dance, theatre and performance as well as ongoing partnerships with musicians Jean-Luc Guionnet, Eric Cordier, Michel Doneda, Mattin, Lionel Marchetti, among many others. After over a decade in Europe he relocated back to Japan in 2013.
His artistic principal is to work with the idea of the plural or inter-disciplinary relationships between music and other disciplines of art: dance, video, paintings, photos, literature etc. In this way, he collaborates with musicians, composers, and sound artists. Improvisation is always the major concern for him, even if it is not his artistic goal. His approach is based on the attention to space and place, to the energy of the audience and to the quality and perception of silence on various levels.
