ENSEMBLE PODCAST

Art, directly or indirectly, is the expression of a conscious or unconscious metaphysical concern, and this is what makes it both valuable and depreciable, indispensable and superfluous. Its content is in this sense unclassifiable - whereas in today's world everything is classified, evaluated and rated. We live in paradoxical societies, of anxiety, of occult forces and at the same time of ingenuity and aesthetic brilliance. In parallel with societal movements that refuse or question classical models, such as those of gender, patriarchy and social categories, art today is retreating from normative ideas and feeding on a new rational and moral freshness. The subtle influence of these societal transformations engages contemporary musical research towards a dissolution of fixed models, while at the same time drawing inspiration from them. The beauty and strength of new ideas is to use the richness of possibilities and at the same time to escape from them. By amplifying reality through non-utilitarian works and activity, music makes us not understand it, but touch it. It is the profound expression of the mystery that defines our human condition and not a commodity to be bought and sold in the sense of the world of evaluation and classification. The pieces and interview excerpts chosen for this podcast reflect this paradoxical world that is both disturbing and exhilarating. They echo the density of the world with its violence, its decay, its fragility, but also its power, its ingenuity and its beauty. The overcoming of genres as well as the reappropriation of heterogeneous elements from classical music, jazz, film music, folk music, recall the complex thickness of the world through musical reminiscences belonging to the collective memory that awaken strange connections. A musical universe that touches the real in its raw state. 🇫🇷 ‣ https://bit.ly/ENSEMBLE013 🇬🇧 ‣ https://bit.ly/ENSEMBLE013-EN

The inner home is a reflection of our inner world. It’s a repository, a sanctuary, a safe place that needs neither windows, nor walls, or doors. A place to take shelter when needing to keep one’s integrity in the midst of the injunctions of this world. It’s also a space that vibrates, that resonates, and that seeks out what knows within us. The resonance of my childhood home has left a deep impact on me, and it has always been part of me. I heard my father's string quartet rehearse tirelessly all day. Through the interpretation and the energy of the musicians, I could already perceive the intentions and the general mood, and also the notes, the phrasings in color by synesthesia. This created a constant sense of wonder in me. The trials of life have led me to practice care, guidance and listening, to perceive how someone's home resonates, to enter into its resonance as one enters into the dance. With my instruments, I put myself on the same frequency to amplify the voices, to assess whether it’s necessary to clean up, to help vibrate what needs to emerge and grow. This practice gradually led me to create my own music therapy tool: maïeuphonie*. *a therapeutic approach invented by Emmanuelle Parrenin, allowing her to give birth to all the voices that inhabit us and to seek the ones who have never had the right to speak.

Temporality takes root everywhere: in our words, our feelings, everyday objects. It is all around us when we pay attention to it. Many people think time is our enemy, because we give it too much importance. I would have preferred not to give this creation a name, but I decided to call it “Hors temps” (out of time). This mix aims to move us away from the grip of time, to feel a new mental space and to question our achievements. Music is a fundamental tool to experience different states to come: meditative state, auditory trance, space of escape… so many names, so many forms. Since my first experience ‘out of time’, I tirelessly try to come back to it. I still remember in high school listening to “I Wonder” by Kanye West in my bedroom and being propelled into a whirlwind of totally unknown emotions. Was it a second, a minute or maybe an hour? Then again with “Getting There” by Flying Lotus, photography by Khalil Joseph, movements by Storyboard P, voice by Niki Randa. How is it possible ? The last work that propelled me out of time was the movie “Elephant still sitting”. Incredible experience of more than 4 hours carried out by Ho Bu, student of Béla Tarr, another director who tries to erase temporality. The intertwined destinies and complex links between different characters that are developed there, are themes that are also found in my work. This podcast is dedicated to Ho Bu

The nature of our current time, amplified by social media and pop culture, has generated a concept of the artist as a winner or idol. In order to legitimize themselves, musicians are exhorted to follow ‘celebrity canons’: having a flashy image or making flashy music, being charismatic, being successful. The creative process is often seen as esoteric and associated with cryptic and vague concepts such as ‘inspiration’, ’talent’, ‘expression’ or ‘freedom’, so it seems music is created magically, in a spontaneous way. As a reaction to this phenomenon, the interview excerpts in this podcast come to remind us that the music profession still consists for a lot of us on a profound devotion. The stress is not on the subject but on the sonic object they generate through constant dedication, a nerd and perseverant investigation, many times in loneliness, where frustration, failure and alienation take place. The compositor or interpreter is not anything but a mere channel of expression of something much bigger than their own persona. Parallelly, the tracks chosen for this podcast also resonate with this idea. This music arouses admiration and interest precisely because it doesn’t look like a desperate claim for attention but a beautiful consequence of this commitment with something pure that comes from a superior order. The popularity or circumstance in which the artist lives is something absurd in comparison to what is laying in the realm they can enter when they make music.

“It feels like certain patterns of movement exist both on big societal scales and in the smallest everyday life. Something might break or crystalize, something might force you to adapt or inspire you to change shape, morph into something new. I have always been interested in transformation. Sometimes I got caught in the thought that I had to change myself for the better. But I found that it is not about changing, but about existing in a constantly changing flow of polarities, ups and downs. With this sound piece I have worked with eight different steps of a cyclic pathway that can go on forever in a loop. There is no right or wrong place to begin or end the loop. Every step of the path will come eventually and lead to the next step. Flow. Friction. Shatter. Zoom. Ray. Morph. Entity. Space… Flow. The cycle of metamorphosis moves between elements of struggle, puzzles, alteration, and revelation. As an alternative to the theories of new beginnings on clean slates, ground zeros or linearly progresses, this cycle plays with the repetition of time. New worlds are built from old ones, new life springs from former life. We are all part of cycles: ecological, historical and spiritual. We can learn how to be present and patient knowing that everything moves and changes again.” ‣ https://bit.ly/ENSEMBLE009 ‣ https://bit.ly/ENSEMBLE009-EN

"Outside environments suddenly came more into focus because of Covid-19, which forced us to shift our attention to our close surroundings and even as close to us as our bodies. Because of this, there has been a renewal of appreciation for the outside environments that are available to us and hopefully, this appreciation and caring attention will be remembered while the world opens up and afterwards, and extended to more and more places. The podcast focuses on a selection of tracks that show different ways of paying careful attention to a surrounding or place. For example, through the amount of time spend in a certain place to record or create it, or through the way the piece gives a voice to a place or landscape, shows hidden sights and lets it take up space. All the tracks are made in Norway and together they offer a kaleidoscopic view of different landscapes and places in this country, and the caring presence humans can have in our surroundings." ‣ https://bit.ly/ENSEMBLE008 ‣ https://bit.ly/ENSEMBLE008-EN

"The music of silence, nap time, what appears when there is no sound, the active listening of nature. The step between being awake and attentive when entering a deep sleep. Everything begins on earth, at the time when night begins to fall, we are alone and our only connection is the toads, the song of the toads immerse us in a dream, they are mantras that detach us from reality to undertake an adventure within ourselves. The landscapes of that dream, the islands of the states, on each island an emotion and a ship loaded with sounds sailing from one island to another. The rough water, the calm water, the moonlight reflected in the waves / waves, the lonely night, and above the stars watching everything. The interruption of reality by cutting off the dream at times, sounds that distract the dream or are integrated into the story. The sunrise, the heat on the body and direct light on the face, a warm bath on the wet body. The arrival to the coast, a journey to know the margins and edges of oneself, the limits and surfaces of our interior, our own seas and our own coasts." ‣ bit.ly/ENSEMBLE007 ‣ bit.ly/ENSEMBLE007-EN

"I dream a lot. Or rather, I remember a lot of my dreams, since we all dream. It is there, in me, very strong and very present since my early childhood. Nested, lucid or premonitory dreams, they are a mode of perception in their own right. Unfortunately, they are often seen as pure fabrication of the mind or a mirage. However, to dream is to set a course, to forge a vision. The dream is a power, a meaning that we can work on and develop. Beyond my personal experiences, I question the role and function of dreams in our world. Utopias and fictions are essential tools that guide the collective. Which trajectory is desirable enough for me to dream about ? Do we still dream of the future ? Individually, collectively? My voice is accompanied by a selection of songs with evocative names, reminiscent of the dream." ‣ bit.ly/ENSEMBLE006 ‣ bit.ly/ENSEMBLE006-EN

"Within the complex sound spectre of our environments and surroundings, sounds are always immersive, proximal, and constantly pushing through our bodies. There is a temporal flux with the sounds of our habitus and daily lives which most often goes unnoticed and ignored. My practice with field recording and engagement with the environment, heightened my awareness of my surroundings and sounds that inhibit this place- learning from them and using the environment as an instrument. There is an underworld in which these audio environments aren’t accessible to us and is rich with sounds. ‘Resonant Links’ investigates this aural-dual infrastructure of the urban and sea life accentuating auditory perspectives and dimensions of these two worlds posing critical questions on our sonic habitus and ecologies." KMRU is a SHAPE artist 2021. SHAPE is a platform co-financed by Europe Creative program of European Union. ‣ bit.ly/ENSEMBLE005 ‣ bit.ly/ENSEMBLE005-EN

"In this mix we find ourselves at a construction site yet inside a ruin: it is a place representing a transitional state. 5 vocal artifacts will guide you into a process of re-modeling, exploring and discovering. The music molds a new terrain ment for healing. Where we become miniature versions of ourselves. Where we are a particle, yet a star, traversing through textures. Where destruction becomes fertile, things are taken apart and examined. It is a constant dive through membranes both synthesized and acoustic, digital and analog, historical and futuristic. Materials stretch into objects, walls crumble into sand. What arrises is a Multi-Membrance Park where water falls into melody and leafs blow in the wind like flutes, where everyone can be warm and at home." upsammy is a SHAPE artist 2020. SHAPE is a platform co-financed by Europe Creative program of European Union. ‣ bit.ly/ENSEMBLE004 ‣ bit.ly/ENSEMBLE004-EN

"Point Shard is about different social issues that have concerned me recently, such as representation of marginalized communities in multicultural societies and white institutional space, racialized emotional labor, gender binaries and ethnocide within the music ecosystem and in musical language. For this podcast Rojin Sharafi asked some artists from her community to record their stories, thoughts and experiences related to these topics. These interviews talks about gender, sexuality, representation and racialization. Rojin evokes a very specific, rich and complex space-time, more than a meeting place, between the utopia of the darkroom and the invisible darkness, around the notion of "queer of color" and some ethnographic anecdotes of transnational and multilingual artists." Rojin Sharafi is a SHAPE artist 2020. SHAPE is a platform co-financed by Europe Creative program of European Union. ‣ bit.ly/ENSEMBLE003 ‣ bit.ly/ENSEMBLE003-EN

"With "Shift in Perception", Maria Teriaeva shares a personal, sensitive and emotional experience of the whole world lockdown last March. In just a few weeks, she switches from her last performance in Paris to a COVID hospital, with an album release in progress and a cancelled tour. As on a TV series, she experiences in a short time, serious changes that can only affect her mood and her general state of mind. She thus invites us to take distance from all these events." ENSEMBLE, a new podcast series of original sound creations building new collective imaginaries ‣ bit.ly/ENSEMBLE002 ‣ bit.ly/ENSEMBLE002-EN

"Innerview is a radio episode, designed as a collage that mixes both the interview and the musical piece. Innerview can be listened to like a generous and unfiltered sound adventure. With a mix of musical improvisation rather in an ambient / synth-based style, and less club than usual, Crystallmess offers original compositions with excerpts from her favourite interviews. American rappers like 2Pac, Damon Dash, Azealia Banks or Sister Souljah... in their most eminently political moments, radically vulnerable and sometimes with a touch of humour." Crystallmess is a SHAPE artist 2019. SHAPE is a platform co-financed by Europe Creative program of European Union. ‣ bit.ly/ENSEMBLE001 ‣ bit.ly/ENSEMBLE001-EN