MOLECULE 2018

BL!NDMAN presents MOLECULE: a showing of several performances and/or installations that unite music and visual arts.MOLECULE is a collaborative process between young artists from several disciplines with musicians of BL!NDMAN. The idea is to enable an understanding between artists from different disciplines in each other’s way of working and creative thinking, resulting in new work. It can never be the intention that one discipline supports or serves the other. To achieve this, a continuous dialogue and several evaluation moments are needed. By working towards a public showing the artists are confronted with the possibilities, the challenges and limitations that they are not always used to in their own daily practice. The collaboration between HISK and BL!NDMAN dates from 2007 and has resulted in several successful works and presentations. Since 2016 the visual artists from HISK have been working with young composers from the conservatories from Antwerp and Ghent.

Pieter De Clercq & Yves Goemaere: installation with recorded music
Pieter De Clercq builds installations with objets trouvés, not infrequently furniture, which he calls comfort zones. For MOLECULE, he focuses specifically on the creation process of such an installation and, together with percussionist Yves Goemaere of BL!NDMAN [drums], he explores the aural possibilities of these comfort zones.

Rebekka Löffler & Ruben De Gheselle: A PLACE, A WORD, installation with recorded music
The artist Rebekka Löffler and the composer Ruben de Gheselle have created a visual and acoustic installation on the floor. A PLACE, A WORD is a composition of seven basic shapes built in ceramic that bend and rearrange themselves in various constellations while interacting with the sound composition based on music gestures of four saxophones merged with the softly spoken words of a poem. Sound, words, and ceramic shapes exist in interdependence, aiming to expand in space in order to localize a place of their own. The installation wants to create a multi-dimensional image of complex structures of thoughts built out of a stream of words, following their inner nature and rising and unfolding themselves in order to evaporate again.Their formations are contrary: transitory and fragile, liquid and changeable, but also powerful and occupying.

Pepa Ivanova & Paolo Galli: A million atoms of soft blue / Sun Lullaby
The title is mix of the joining powers between the visual and sound artist Pepa Ivanova and the composer Paolo Galli. In the reverberation of Sun-Earth symbiosis, Pepa Ivanova aims to sonify the observational data with earth field recordings. For this collaboration, Pepa works on soundscapes composition following the light of a day as described by V.W and light intensity measurements she collects. Paolo Galli aims to investigate the interactions between the phonetic characteristics of a text and the timbral and formal characteristics of an instrumental composition. In order to accomplish this aim, a text, based on fragments extracted from the interludes of The Waves by Virginia Woolf (in which the different positions of the sun in a single day are described)
has been musically reflected and expanded by a composition for saxophone quartet, viola, cello, 2 percussionists and mezzo-soprano through the adoption of phonetic criteria. The resulting sound texture has been then merged with soundscape compositions based on field-recordings.

Cadine Navarro & Gillis Sacré: Two Fragments, light installation with recorded music
Composer Gillis Sacré created a score for string quartet and soprano based on the conversations he had with visual artist Cadine Navarro. Cadine, in turn, will respond to Gillis’ composition with a (light) installation. Keywords are meditation, ritual, the limits of language and sound.

*Patrick Housen, Marie Van Vollenhoven & Tim Duerinck: Trigger Tribe
Composer Patrick Housen explores the role of composer as live performer and the use of new techniques and technology in doing so. In visual artist Marie Van Vollenhoven and instrument builder/researcher Tim Duerinck he found his ideal companions-de-route. Together with them and the percussionists of BL!NDMAN [drums], he created Trigger Tribe: image and sound / composer and musicians trigger each other live and thus create a multimedia performance.An outlet and a quest for the impact of immersive sound and image on human perception. This concert forms a preliminary study for the premiere of the performance Trigger Tribe at OORtreders 2018, Festival for art with sound on 20 October at Provinciaal Domein Dommelhof (www.oortreders.com) This project is made possible with the support of the Flemish Government, the province of Limburg, C-TAKT, Musica, Dommelhof. “ —> Musica,Impulse centre for music.

Ariane Loze & Umut Riza Eldem: LE BANQUET
Video artist Ariane Loze makes MÔWN: Movies on my own, in which she herself plays various characters who may or may not interact with each other on a variety of topics in a variety of contexts. Composer Umut Riza Eldem was attracted to the theatrical character of Ariane’s work. Together with five musicians from BL!NDMAN, they elaborate Le Banquet, an existing concept of Ariane.