Text and perform : Clyde Chabot
Sound & perform : ErikM
Silo Méréville . France
Duration : 30mn
2020

eRikm & Les Percussions de Strasbourg
Teaser 1 & 2 / Full Show 3
Commissioned by Percussions de Strasbourg & GMEM
World premier : Oct 7th 2016 @ Musica festival, Strasbourg, FR
Joint work for percussion and electro live, 50 ‘
Production : Percussions de Strasbourg
Coproduction : Co opérative, GMEM, Musica,
Cité musicale - Metz.
With the support of CNC / DICREAM.

duration : 50 mn
eRikm : Turntables
FM Einheit : Metal sheet / Clay bricks / Metal springs
Creation 2008 Festival Musique Action Nancy . France

Comment c’est !? En français ici
Published on 10.09.2008
Bernard Stiegler / eRikm, "Improvisation pour faire attention" (Improvisation to pay attention)
Halles de Schaerbeek, Brussels Belgium, 09.09.2008

This encounter between a musician/platinist philosopher and a philosopher rhapsodizing about concepts turns out to be much less "incongruous" than it may seem. eRikm immediately strikes with his words : lucidity, reflection that integrates the complexity of his practices and how they interact with the environment.
The art of constructing his electronic lutherie makes him sensitive to organology in the broadest sense : the technologies he uses, through their ramifications, involve him in the technical becoming of society as anchor points in being (appendages). On a large screen, in the background, a montage of images he has created is displayed, echoing his words. We see his workspace, cut by cut, technical equipment, notes, record collection, library, turntables, annotated papers, record sleeves, and all the details of life on and around the workspace (hours spent searching, struggling, trying, failing, finding), ashtray, leftovers from snacking, cups, an interpretation of the platinist’s workbench in its material and mental dimensions, "how it is organized" from manipulated objects, leaving their imprint.

This is followed by a dazzling demonstration, a sharp choreography, a pointed discourse, sharp, without fat, full of flashes. Virtuoso mastery of techniques initially based on a certain bricolage (how it becomes an elaborate, structured, scholarly language), with breathtaking inspiration. And a movement that engages the whole body, drawn/rejected by the oscillations of the centrifugal force of the turntables.

Bernard Stiegler then takes the floor. He recalls that improvisation, often associated with jazz music, took on a decidedly new turn with the advent of recording, the possibility of listening to oneself, listening to others to analyze their know-how, appropriate it, extend it. To such an extent that from that moment on, the distinction between written music and oral tradition music no longer exists. (To the chagrin, he reminds us, of Pierre Boulez) Jazz, contrary to popular belief, is based on a kind of writing, the score exists, like an embodied plan. (An approach that Alberto Nogueira has theorized for decades within the Médiathèque with his concept of "savantization" : with recording, all music becomes scholarly, leaving its "popular" status behind...)

He then develops his conception of improvisation, "thinking is improvising," in an essential dimension of life where it needs the improbable to happen. Something that surprises and can only be effective and efficient if attention is engaged, active, inherent in all relational practices engaged in cultural and social life. The emergence of what surprises means that something is happening, in the realm of discovery, and implies that "it changes me." Difference is thus generated. Surprise, difference, change are indispensable elements in the processes of individual and collective individuation (that is, self-construction, self with others, others with self).
He will mention Ornette Coleman’s historic album "Free jazz" as a perfect example of successful collective individuation. (Sometimes it fails too... improvisation, based on exercises of remembrance and repetition, sometimes also rambles, which is part of the general process, one must go through it, just as one practices scales).

The structure of the presentation embeds elements to understand that, contrary to what the sophists thought and think, it is not the techniques that destroy individuation, but the powers that direct their use and destiny. Meaning, he will say in response to a listener’s question, is not signification, but what traverses the mechanisms of transindividuation (in a phenomenon of improvisation, for example, but also in any social relation requiring creativity and relationships with others), and which at first is incomprehensible to me, because I do not know it, I must discover it, learn to know it. And there you have it, in a few clearly articulated ideas, enough to establish a cultural policy. Alas, the minds responsible for this work were not very present.

How can we make it clear that a cultural policy, whose social purpose is to promote the most diverse and fruitful phenomena of collective individuation, must resolutely decide to surprise audiences and register it as such in all the program contracts of the institutions supposed to carry the cultural policy !? However, it is rather the opposite path that is heavily recommended : no longer take risks, use the recipes that are most likely to fill the halls (ratings), in short, integrate the slogans of cultural industries... (I just regret that Bernard Stiegler did not "improvise" more in response to eRikm’s musical discourse).

Densités festival Fresnes en Watt - France
duration : 25 mn

lyrics : christophe fiat
musics : erikm & c. fiat

Centre Pompidou Paris - France
duration : 52 mn

French film directed by René Clair in 1923
music score : erikm