S*CKMYP

In the year 2000, the musician and composer Eric Sleichim, the driving force behind the Bl!ndman saxophone quartet, worked with artists from various disciplines on seven separate projects, which he called the TAZ: temporary autonomous zones, after Hakim Bey. Each zone is both an independent performance and part of a ësuiteí, a larger entity.

The link between all the zones is in the first place Sleichim himself, and also the writer Peter Verhelst, who is providing annotations, reflections and poems for each zone.

Apart from these two, those working on the zones include Geert Mul (Netherlands), Gerry Hemingway (USA), Maia Urstad (Norway), Neuer Tanz (Germany), Peter Missotten (Belgium), Ulrike Gabriel (Germany), VA Wˆlfl (Germany), Amanda Miller (USA) and the Flemish Radio Orchestra.

In January 2001, Sleichim and the director Guy Cassiers will be drawing material from the various zones to make a final product: La Grande Suite, which will close Brussels 2000 and at the same time open Rotterdam 2001, Cultural Capital. The title given to zone 7 is S*CKMYP, and this piece takes the bowels of the city as its starting point. Verhelst, Missotten and Sleichim expose the forgotten rite somewhere between speed poetry and acid fiction.

The media of video and light will be perverted, while sound will be reduced to the purely physiological. The scenario will be repeatedly twisted, while the denouement cannot be changed in the slightest. The sand is smouldering but the stray body keeps watch.