During is long career as photographer, cameraman first and director then, Luca de Luigi introduces here his view on filming musical events, from the arena of Verona, to Bayreuth with the director Werner Herzog and then a long series of live concerts at the Montreux Jazz festival including Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock among many others.
Luca de Luigi / Interview by Luca Forcucci – July 24th 2019 / Gordevio, Valle Maggia
Artisan video director for music and documentary films. He has created also cultural shows for the Swiss Italian TV RTS , photographer, cameramen, and since 23 years director.
Artigiano regista video musicale e documentario. Ha creato Emissioni Culturali alla RTS Fotografo, Cameraman e da 23 anni Regista.
In this interview, Jill Scott and I are sitting in a Ethiopian restaurant in Berlin. We learn about her large body of work spanning from performance, video to sonic arts, media arts and neuroscience. How all this could possibly connect ? A series of travels, experiments and encounters informed this important and very inspiring artist, which are embedded into a unique research in art and science.
Jill Scott / Interview by Luca Forcucci – September 1st 2019 / Berlin
Professor Dr. Jill Scott is an artist, teacher and context provider with 40 years experience in the unique transdisciplinary field of art, science and technology interactions. Her research spans neuroscience, electronics, ecology, sociology, sculpture, performative installation and media art. Her artwork is focused on the human body, the social and physical impact of technology on our bodies and the health of our environment. She asks: How does technological and biotechnical “progress” affect way we “see” our body? How can artists raise awareness about the human body and the scientific structure of sensory perception? How can artists shed light on the health affects of our physical environment? To address these questions, she builds interactive media installations that immerse viewers inside designed environments. She explores how visual metaphors and poetic analogies might create an alternative forms of art and science communication to help others learn more about sensory perception and reflect on their own ideological, biological, ecological, gendered and ethical futures.
More than 500 references have been issued on the Subrosa label since the 1980’s. Guy Marc Hinant, poet, writer, publisher, music producer and cinematographer together with Fred Walheer, started the label, with recordings of William S. Burroughs. Here he discusses the journey where noise and spectres enter the discussions (literally).
Guy Marc Hinant / Interview by Luca Forcucci – July 17th 2019 / Berlin-Bruxelles
Guy Marc Hinant dirige le label indépendant Sub Rosa spécialisé en musique électronique et expérimentale dont il est le créateur. Il y édite la série An Anthology of Noise and Electronic Music. Il a écrit plusieurs fragments narratifs et notes sur l’esthétique pour les Éditions de l’Heure, diverses revues internationales telles que Leonardo Music Journal (SF), Luna-Park surtout (édité par Marc Dachy à Paris), la revue Pylône (Bruxelles) et pour la revue Lapin (L’Association, Paris). Par ailleurs, il donne des conférences sur l’émergence du bruit dans la musique occidentale – preuves à l’appui. Compagnon de l’auteur de bandes dessinées Dominique Goblet, il apparaît dans ses albums sous le nom de « GM » . Au début des années 1980, il était membre du groupe Pseudo Code avec Alain Neffe et Xavier Ess. En 2001, il fonde OME – L’Observatoire – avec Dominique Lohlé, ensemble ils réalisent une série de documentaires sur l’art de l’écoute et le bruit.
Guy-Marc Hinant (Charleroi, 1960) is a Belgian poet, writer, publisher, music producer and cinematographer. In the late 1980s Hinant, together with Frédéric Walheer, founded the Belgian record label Sub Rosa, which specializes in avant-garde, electronic and noise music. The name of the record label was deduced from the first sentence of Gilles Deleuze’s book Mille plateaux. He lives and works in Brussels. From 2002 to 2004 Hinant worked on the musicological project Anthology of Noise and Electronic Music. Hinant wrote poetry and prose to the works of his lover, the Belgian visual artist Dominique Goblet.
The discussion turns around the long friendship that Stanley Moss developed with the iconic musician from New Orleans Dr John. Stories emerging from their twenties in Los Angeles while working for a musical label, in New York in the 1980’s for parties in loft space where David Byrne was present too, and New Orleans until today. Graphic design, brand strategy, and Dr John: the story of a friendship
Stanley Moss / Interview by Luca Forcucci – July 9th 2019 / Berlin– Verona
Stanley Moss (b. 1948), is founder of DiGanZi Group, a brand advisory, and The Club of Venice, a private conversation on brands and branding. He is global brand ambassador for Gottschalk + Ash of Zürich. He’s also author of novels including The Hacker, HACK IS BACK, The Crimson Garter and Fate & The Pearls, and The Book of Deals. A brand guru, philosopher, writer, and artist, he divides his time between Europe, India and Southern California. He served as CEO of The Medinge Group, the Stockholm-based think-tank on international branding, 2004-2012. He was a fine artist, sponsored by Absolut and Johnnie Walker Black Label, and exhibited landscapes in the US State Department Art in Embassies program. His “New Wave Cookbook” is in the permanent collection of the MoMA NY. He is a faculty member at Academia di Belle Arti Cignaroli of Verona, Italy; Travel Editor for Lucire, a New Zealand fashion magazine; and served on the Board of the Rocket Mavericks Foundation.
Dr. John belongs to a prestigious lineage of New Orleans keyboard greats that includes such names as Professor Longhair, Huey “Piano” Smith and Fats Domino.
His name has become synonymous with the city in which he was born.
Dr. John’s music is stamped with the rhythms and traditions of the
Crescent City, and he has spent a career that now spans more than half a
century championing its music.
His best-known work includes Gris-Gris (1968), an album steeped in the otherworldly sounds of Louisianan voodoo culture; Gumbo (1972), wherein he offered an authoritative overview of New Orleans’ finest music; and In the Right Place (1973),
which gave him the Top Ten hit “Right Place, Wrong Time.” His concerts
are ritual invocations of New Orleans’ enduring musical spirit. More
broadly, he has helped bring the sound of New Orleans into the national
mainstream.
Born Malcolm John “Mac” Rebennack, he learned piano
and guitar as a child. As a child growing up in the 1940s, he was
steeped in the music of the city. “It was a special time in New
Orleans,” he told USA Today’s Edna Gunderson. “The radio
stations played basically New Orleans music, and I thought that was what
the whole world heard.” His father ran an appliance store that carried
records, and he also repaired P.A. systems for clubs around town; it was
through him that young Mac gained exposure to the world of music in New
Orleans.
As a musician, he was schooled by local legends like Walter “Papoose”
Nelson (Professor Longhair’s guitarist), guitarist Roy Montrell,
keyboardist James Booker and Cosimo Matassa (whose J&M Studio was
the hub of the city’s recording scene). Rebennack became one of the
first white sessionmen on the local scene. A fixture in New Orleans’
clubs and studios, Rebennack found himself making music night and day.
“We used to work twelve hours a day, seven days a week, on Bourbon
Street,” he told interviewer Robert Santelli. “That was real easy to do
because there were so many clubs.”
He participated in sessions for records released on such labels as
Ric and Ron, Minit, Ace, Ebb, Specialty and AFO (“All For One,” started
by a cooperative of New Orleans musicians).
In short, Mac Rebennack was a pure product of New Orleans. “The
old-timers schooled me good,” Dr. John reflected. “They brainwashed me
to respect music, whether we were playing rockabilly or blues or rock
and roll.”
Rebennack began recording as far back as 1957 and released his first
single, “Storm Warning,” under his own name in 1959. As much as he loved
New Orleans, he moved to Los Angeles in 1962, joining an exodus of
local musicians who left town after a new district attorney began
cracking down on clubs and nightlife in an effort to curb vice. Working
in L.A. with producer Harold Battiste, a fellow Crescent City
expatriate, he created the character of Dr. John the Night Tripper, a
voodoo sorcerer and healer. His first album, Gris-Gris,
masterfully evoked the mystical spirit of back-alley voodoo in a musical
setting of otherworldly “N’Awlins” swamp funk. It meshed perfectly with
the age of psychedelia in which it was released. Dr. John cut this
startling release during unused session time for a Sonny and Cher album,
as that duo had become involved in a movie project. Such cuts as “I
Walk on Gilded Splinters” evoked a late-night, back-streets netherworld
of ritual and mystery. The album remains a unique achievement in the
realm of popular music, a touchstone to a world that few even knew
existed.
Gris-Gris was followed by three more albums in the same vein: Babylon (1969), Remedies (1970) and The Sun, Moon & Herbs (1971).
The last of these was intended to be a three-record set, each
reflecting a different time of day. Some sessions were conducted in
England, with such musicians as Eric Clapton and Mick
Jagger participating. However, because of technical and budgetary
issues, it was pared down to a single album.
In the first half of the 1970’s, Dr. John released a series of albums
that mixed New Orleans classics with original material, all driven by
his remarkable piano playing and superb bands. This change in direction
from underground mystic to overground eminence began with Gumbo,
Dr. John’s fifth album, released in 1972. The idea that he pay tribute
to New Orleans’ musical legacy came from Jerry Wexler, the renowned
producer and talent scout for Atlantic Records, who co-produced Gumbo with
Harold Battiste. Dr. John was signed to Atco, an Atlantic subsidiary,
and Wexler made the suggestion after hearing him warm up with such
material in the studio. It brought broader exposure to both the artist
and his city’s musical heritage.
This paved the way for a pair of albums, In the Right Place (1973) and Desitively Bonnaroo
(1974), that carried his career to the next level. Both were made in
collaboration with Allen Toussaint and the Meters, longtime stalwarts of
the New Orleans scene. “Right Place, Wrong Time,” from In the Right Place,
became a Top Ten hit that spent nearly half a year on the chart. The
album’s other hit single was “Such a Night,” which Dr. John performed at
the Band’s The Last Waltz farewell concert.
In the late Seventies, he moved to New York and worked with producer
Tommy LiPuma and lyricist Doc Pomus, resulting in the albums City Lights (1978) and Tango Palace (1979). In the early Eighties he made his first solo piano recordings (Dr. John Plays Mac Rebennack, 1981, and The Brightest Smile in Town, 1983). He ended the decade with In a Sentimental Mood (1989), an album of standards that reunited him with LiPuma.
The Nineties witnessed an artistic rebirth and rekindled connection
with his New Orleans roots. In 1992, as remarkable as it may seem, Dr.
John actually recorded his first album in New Orleans. Entitled Goin’ Back to New Orleans,
it was “like a little history of New Orleans music—from way back in the
1850s to the 1950s,” Dr. John explained. In 1998 he returned to the
mystical aura of his Gris-Gris period on Anutha Zone, which included cameos from such younger British admirers as Paul Weller and members of Spiritualized and Supergrass. Creole Moon,
released in 2001, assimilated the various aspects of New Orleans music
into a tasty gumbo. In 2004, Dr. John again saluted the Big Easy’s
musical heritage on N’Awlinz: Dis, Dat or D’Udda, which rounded
up such New Orleans legends as Earl Palmer, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown,
Willie Tee, Snooks Eaglin, Eddie Bo, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and a
member of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.
Beyond his vast discography as a recording artist, the list of
sessions on which he has played for others is lengthy and impressive
enough to merit his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a
sideman, too. Dr. John’s bottomless sessionography includes releases by
Maria Muldaur, Johnny Winter, Buddy Guy and Junior Wells, Van Morrison,
the Band, Frank Zappa, Ringo Starr, Canned Heat, the Rolling Stones and
countless others. He has even done well for himself as a jingle writer,
tinkling the ivories on funky-sounding commercials for Levi’s blues
jeans and Popeye’s Chicken.
For more than three decades Dr. John has been a perennial performer
at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. He has also become an
unofficial spokesman and ambassador for the city and its musical
history. Meanwhile he continues to make creative, challenging records in
the New Orleans style.
In 2008 Dr. John and his band, the Lower 911, released City That Care Forgot.
The most topical and hard-hitting album of his career, it addressed the
toll taken on his beloved hometown by decades of neglect and its near
destruction by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. City That Care Forgot
won Dr. John a Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Album—the fifth of
his career. Meanwhile, he continues to keep the city’s musical heritage
and history alive.
“The most important thing to remember is this: New Orleans music was
not invented,” Dr. John noted in 1992. “It kind of grew up
naturally…joyously…just for fun. That’s it. Just plain down-to-earth
happy-times music. When I was growing up in the Third Ward, I used to
think, ‘Oh, man, this music makes me feel the best!”
During an afternoon we sat together under the trees and birdsongs at the SAVVY art space in Berlin, where she was presenting works, for a long, beautiful conversation on sonic gestures, different accents and letter writing.
Pamela Z / Interview by Luca Forcucci – May 24th 2019 / Berlin
Pamela Z is a composer/performer and media artist who works primarily with voice, live electronic processing, sampled sound, and video. A pioneer of live digital looping techniques, she processes her voice in real time to create dense, complex sonic layers. Her solo works combine experimental extended vocal techniques, operatic bel canto, found objects, text, and sampled concrète sounds. She uses MAX MSP and Isadora software on a MacBook Pro along with custom MIDI controllers that allow her to manipulate sound and image with physical gestures. Her performances range in scale from small concerts in galleries to large-scale multi-media works in theaters and concert halls. In addition to her performance work, she has a growing body of inter-media gallery works including multi-channel sound and video installations.
Pamela Z has toured
extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan – performing
in international festivals including Bang on a Can at Lincoln Center
(New York); La Biennale di Venezia (Italy); the Interlink Festival
(Japan); Other Minds (San Francisco); and Pina Bausch Tanztheater’s 25
Jahre Fest (Wuppertal, Germany). She has composed, recorded and
performed original scores for choreographers and for film/video artists,
and has done vocal work for other composers (including Charles
Amirkhanian, Vijay Iyer, and Henry Brant). Her large-scale, multi-media
performance works, including Memory Trace, Baggage Allowance, Voci, and Gaijin,
have been presented at venues like the Kitchen in New York, Yerba Buena
Center for the Arts, and Theater Artaud (Z Space) in San Francisco, the
Museum of Contemporary Art Theatre in Chicago, as well as at theaters
in Washington D.C. and Budapest Hungary. Her one-act opera Wunderkabinet inspired
by the Museum of Jurassic Technology (co-composed with Matthew Brubeck)
premiered at The LAB Gallery in San Francisco, and was presented at
REDCAT in Los Angeles and Open Ears Festival in Canada. She has shown
media works in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art (New
York); Erzbischöfliches Diözesanmuseum (Cologne); the Tang Museum
(Saratoga Springs NY); the Dakar Biennale (Sénégal); Krannert Art Museum
(IL), and the Kitchen (NY).
Ms. Z has had chamber music commissions from Kronos Quartet, the Bang On A Can All Stars; Ethel String Quartet, the California E.A.R. Unit; the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble; the Empyrean Ensemble, and St. Luke’s Chamber Orchestra. She curates and produces “the ROOM Series”, a San Francisco avant-chamber series featuring the work of a variety of virtuosic solo artists and chamber groups playing experimental music. She has collaborated with a wide range of artists including Joan La Barbara, Joan Jeanrenaud, Brenda Way (ODC Dance), Miya Masaoka, Jeanne Finley + John Muse, Shinichi Iova Koga (Inkboat), Christina McPhee, and Luciano Chessa. She has participated in several New Music Theatre events (including John Cage festivals), and has performed with The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. Her interactive web-based work Baggage Allowance can be viewed at baggageallowance.tv where it is permanently installed.
The works developed by this artist span over 40 years of research and includes important ones proposed as performances, mail art, brainwaves experiments and poetry among others. Paulo Bruscky discusses these during an interview in Recife.
Interview by Luca Forcucci / 22 November 2018in Recife
Paulo Roberto Barbosa Bruscky (Recife, Pernambuco, 1949). Artista multimídia, poeta. Na década de 1960, inicia pesquisa no campo da arte conceitual, e a partir de 1970 desenvolve pesquisas em arte-xerox. Em 1973, atua no Movimento Internacional de Arte Postal, sendo um dos pioneiros no Brasil nessa arte, e no ano seguinte lança o Manifesto Nadaísta. Organiza duas exposições internacionais de arte postal no Recife nos anos de 1975 e 1976, sendo esta última fechada pelos militares brasileiros. Realiza 30 filmes de artistas e videoarte entre 1979 e 1982, e começa a produzir videoinstalações em 1983. Cria, em 1980, o xerox-filme com base em sequências xerográficas. Com a Bolsa Guggenheim de artes visuais recebida em 1981, reside por um ano em Nova York. Nesse ano, expõe na sala especial sobre arte postal montada na 16ª Bienal Internacional de São Paulo. É editor de livros de artistas e mantém em seu ateliê no Recife importante coleção de livros e documentos sobre arte contemporânea, entre eles correspondência com integrantes dos grupos Fluxus e Gutai. Em 2004, seu ateliê é integralmente transferido do Recife para São Paulo, sendo remontado em uma das oito salas especiais da 26ª Bienal Internacional de São Paulo.
b. 1949, Recife, Brazil | lives and works in Recife, Brazil
Paulo Bruscky’s work reflects a simultaneous engagement with both the Brazilian artist’s local framework of Recife and a global network, which he documents in artist’s books, performative projects, and photographs. Associated with Fluxus, and a key participant in the international mail-art movement, he investigates meaning through action, collage, installation, film, and poetry. Produced during his first trip to New York as part of a Guggenheim Fellowship and in collaboration with Daniel Santiago, Air Art Proposal of Composition of Colored Clouds in the Sky of New York (1982) is one of a series of classified ads published in Brazilian and other newspapers that advocate absurd or impossible situations.
From his early experiment while studying violin and physics in Rio de Janeiro
to his exil in Argentina, Netherland, Paris and more during the difficult Brazilian period in the1960-1980s, Antunes collected a number of prizes for his exceptional compositions. He embarks us in his journey.
Jorge Antunes interview by Luca Forcucci / 20 November 2018 / Recife / Brazil
Jorge Antunes formou-se em violino, composição e regência. Em 1961 se destacou como precursor da música eletrônica no Brasil. Realizou estudos pós-graduados na Argentina, na Holanda e na França. Foi Professor Titular na Universidade de Brasília de 1973 até 2011 quando se aposentou. Obteve vários prêmios nacionais e internacionais. É membro da Academia Brasileira de Música. Suas obras são publicadas por Salabert, Breitpkof&Hartell, Gerig, Ricordi, Sistrum, Billaudot e Suvini Zerboni.
Escritor
Sua produção literária é vasta, embora pouco conhecida. A divulgação de seus poemas, crônicas e outros escritos tem se restringido à inclusão em algumas coletâneas, livros coletivos e jornais e revistas. Em 1998 a editora Hemisfério Sul, de Blumenau, publicou seu livro de literatura juvenil A Morte do Arco-Íris. Em 2001 ganhou o primeiro lugar no concurso de contos da Revista Poiésis. Em 2006 recebeu menção honrosa no Concurso de Contos Yage, em Salzburg, na Áustria.
Artista Plástico
Participou dos Salões Nacionais de
Belas Artes, do Salão de Abril no MAM e dos Salões Nacionais de Arte
Moderna. Partindo do princípio de que “o grau de recepção de uma
mensagem artística é proporcional ao número de sentidos usados na
recepção”, criou obras as quais denominou “arte integral”, pelo apelo
direto aos cinco sentidos, inclusive o paladar. Emprega assim os
diferentes recursos audiovisuais e cinéticos, além de odores, elementos
gustativos e possibilidades táteis.
was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1942. He completed his musical studies at the University of Brazil: violin, composition and conducting. From 1961 he stands out as a precursor of electroacoustic music in Brazil and begins research in the field of the correspondence between sounds and colors.
He took postgraduate courses in Buenos Aires, Paris and Utrecht, studying with Ginastera, Kröpfl, Gandini, Koenig, Bayle, Reibel and Schaeffer. From 1973 he is a full professor at the University of Brasilia, having retired in 2011. In 1976-1977, he completed his doctorate at the University of Paris VIII under supervision of Daniel Charles.
Antunes works with electroacoustic music and computer music, but his instrumental production is very great. Its scientific production is also vast, with articles published in several specialized journals and annals of congresses. He has published five books on techniques and theory of contemporary music.
Their scores are published by Suvini Zerboni, Billaudot, Breitkopf & Hartell, Durand and Sistrum. In 2002 he was appointed Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication. In 2012 Antunes received the Ibermusicas prize. In 2013 he was a resident-composer at CMMAS, Mexico. In 2014 was done, in Brasilia, the world premiere of his new opera “A Cartomante”. In March of 2017 was done the world premiere, in São Paulo, of his new opera “The Mirror”.
Their scores are published by Suvini Zerboni, Billaudot, Breitkopf & Hartell, Durand and Sistrum. In 2002 he was appointed Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication. In 2012 Antunes received the Ibermusicas prize. In 2013 he was a resident-composer at CMMAS, Mexico. In 2014 was done, in Brasilia, the world premiere of his new opera “A Cartomante”. In March of 2017 was done the world premiere, in São Paulo, of his new opera “The Mirror”.
The artist evokes is journey into photography, films and music, and the technology he used over the years for each discipline. Moreover, he talks about his loft in New York where concert of ‘new’ music took place through Experimental Intermedia organization.
Phill Niblock / Interview by Luca Forcucci – May 21st 2018 / Berlin
Phill Niblock (b. 1933, USA) is an artist whose fifty-year career spans minimalist and experimental music, film and photography. Since 1985, he has served as director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation for avant-garde music based in New York with a branch in Ghent, and curator of the foundation’s record label XI. Known for his thick, loud drones of music, Niblock’s signature sound is filled with microtones of instrumental timbres that generate many other tones in the performance space. In 2013, his diverse artistic career was the subject of a retrospective realised in partnership between Circuit (Contemporary Art Centre Lausanne) and Musée de l’Elysée. The following year Niblock was honoured with the prestigious Foundation for Contemporary Arts John Cage Award.
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