CTM/Tabula Rasa/photo:Christaphenia Danai
CTM.08 ANTICIPATING UNPREDICTABILITY
Christian Marclay [CH] & Flo Kaufmann [CH] "Tabula Rasa"
The story told on the evening of the 28th of January at club Maria was the story of a sound that travelled through the same places in several different forms. The sound was created on an empty turntable by the fingers of Christian Marclay tapping on the tone-arm. It was then recorded in real time by Flo Kaufman and cut into vinyl that went back to Christian Marclay in the form of a vinyl record and played on a turntable this time. The sound never stopped being recorded and repressed on vinyl ending up acquiring many different uniforms (copies) worn several times during this circular procedure.
“Tabula Rasa” was somewhat of the theatrical play of the above story, which was certainly an audiovisual “take over”. Merged into a collaborative unity, both of the artists’ backgrounds were unfolded in a skilful performance as Christian Marclay manipulated his turntables as puppets and Flo Kaufman almost scientifically turned raw vinyl into sound. The performance concept seemed to be to develop the soundscape through the production line putting the audience in the position of the witness of the birth and life of that sound. Considering the importance of the visualisation of sound to both artists and to the performance’s entity audio and visual were integral. DV cameras filming the process were connected to projectors facing all walls of the space in an explosive visual circulation.
Each performer had specific tasks mastering in their specialisation combining them in an overall content. Their dialogue sounded fluent within the abstract flow of consequent events around the material (vinyl). The show was efficient in little solo performances as well; for instance, Marclay’s turntablism that at some point extended the sound motion from the table to the space around it moving one of his three turntables in order to involve feedback sound and pedal effects in the knowledge of it being recorded and pressed into another record.
Both Christian Marclay and Flo Kaufman have pioneered in their media in a unique manner. Marclay has a large body of visual, musical and graphic work that has established him as one of the most adventurous experimental artist in the avant-garde scene. In his sound works he has collaborated with other representative noise artists as a turntablist such as Sonic Youth and Otomo Yoshihide but is also known for his impressive video and graphic works. All of Marclay’s creations are filtered through a musical perspective with the sense of music either as a popular form of culture or the basis of a visual composition technique. Kaufman’s work is mostly around the examination of the vinyl record as a material, which is also his sound orientation. Flo Kaufman is a sound engineer, DJ and vinyl cutter. He most frequently uses old cutting equipment and unusual analogue bits and pieces to built new instruments.
“Tabula Rasa” was a complicated conception that demanded equally complicated observation. Eyes and ears had to be on alert while watching the performance with frequent superimpositions of one sense in favour of the other or the opposite. Indubitably, the idea of size was challenged in terms of the elements’ domination against the human factor. That challenge let neither the audience nor the performers unaffected. In fact, the witnessing of the sound genesis and journey had taken the role of a discussion about the human-machine relationship very efficiently verifying contemporary avant-garde art’s function, especially when the music genre is referred to as noise.
text/photos: chrisaphenia danai
CTM/Tabula Rasa2/photo:Christaphenia Danai
