Mattin

8-10 April 2016 Billy Bao, Counter Flows Festival, Glasgow





Noise & Reality: The Malevolence of Our Times
11-13 April 2016 Cafe Oto, London

"Nothing to do, nothing to say.. waiting for the gift of Sound and Vision."
David Bowie, 1977

This could be a good description to understand our times. A lack of general vision for the future while most people's present sinks into oblivion. Somebody is getting a good deal out of if.

What to do given this abject picture? 

We could start by understanding our own conditioning, genarating agency or at least recognising our lack of it. Certainly there is a lack of harmony in reality and complexity is expanding to unprecedented levels of undecipherality. Nevertheless we have the best tools to understand our times as we never before in history had more cultural inscriptions. During these three days we will engange with conversations, concerts and performances dealing with noise, economic crisis and experiments in language that acknowleds our alienated condition.

Let's try to understand the noise and reality of our present so we can consciously produce  the sound and vision of the future 

(without waiting for anybody's gift).

Cafe OTO
18–22 Ashwin street
Dalston
London
E8 3DL

https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/

11th
NOISE, EPISTEMOLOGY AND ABJECTION
Inigo Wilkins and Cecile Malaspina conversation on noise and epistemology
"           " sic Goldie
Billy Bao
VOMIR

12th
LANGUAGE, VOICE AND CRISIS
Anguish Language editors and friends
Miguel Prado and Mattin
Xabier Erkizia

13th
ALIENATION AS AN ENABLING CONDITION
Ray Brassier (via Skype) and Mattin conversation on alienation
Laboria Cubonics
Seymour Wright and Sally Golding
Social Realist Score (Working Draft)

Workshop
12th & 13th April
10am-2pm
Social Realist Score (Working Draft)
How do we perform a score that deals with the fuckedupness of this world? Refugee crisis, economic meltdown, cold and hot war, Europe moving to the right and there is no vision for the future. Nevertheless we can generate an score with the information that we get from the present state of affairs and try to find ways to interpret it. If John Cage brought to the surface the sounds of the room in his composition 4'33'' changing the foreground and background relationship in music (i.e. no sound of a proper musicians is more valid that that produced by an audience member, or the room), we would take an step further and bring to the foreground the reality outside of the room, and find ways of engaging with it from our privileged position. We will take the apparent impossibility of changing the course of reality in parallel with the paralysis that might occur in the room out of accepting certain social conventions. Without shying away from contradictions and confrontation, we will play with this paralysis and we will deal with our anxieties in order to understand how do we become subjects in a given situation. In concrete terms, the score is a way to link the global affairs with the context of an art academy through processing social relations by sonic and performative means using ourselves as instruments.

14th April 

The Ex + Guttersnipe + Deflag Haemorrhage/Haien Kontra

Thursday, 7:30pm, Exchange, Bristol, United Kingdom

8th May, Elbis Rever,  Mattin,   Tabakalera, Donosti
8th October, Mattin, Kule, Berlin

NO-HOW: A critical series of embodied studies or, in other words– putting ourselves on the line.

http://www.nkprojekt.de/no-how-a-critical-series-of-embodied-studies-or-in-other-words%E2%80%93-putting-ourselves-on-the-line/

Reading Group 2016 | Wednesdays March 2, 9, 16, 23, 30, April 6, 13 & 20, 2016.
18:00-21:00

This is a weekly meeting for those interested in understanding how we are conditioned in different ways. If we consider the possibility of actual transformation, first we need to understand ourselves in relation to this world.

We will explore our own determination from different perspectives: linguistically, socially, sexually, culturally, racially, economically, historically, biologically, and more. We will also take into account Berlin and the changes that is going through.

Launched by a group of musicians and artists, this experimental series starts with a critical standpoint towards current culture and music in particular, including the avant-garde, popular and obscure: does music contain transformative qualities? Or is it just a soundtrack for our fucked up times? Are extreme actions, improvisational approaches and noise enough to dismantle our conditioned selves? Or do we need to radically reconsider the critical potential of these practices? Can we still say no to the unfairness of this world through cultural practices or do we need something else altogether?

Each week a text will be proposed which should be read before attending. The first part of the meeting will be discussion; here we will collectively draw notes and create a ‘score’ to guide us through ‘embodied exercises’ in the second part of the meeting. We wish to learn not only discursively, but through embodied practice, so we can experientially understand what experience is. By collectively using ourselves -including our bodies- as material for the exercises, we attempt to understand our conditioning through action.

PREPARATORY SESSIONS (to precede the coming ‘Perspectives’):

2. März: Some Remarks on Kant’s Theory of Experience by Wilfrid Sellars

9. März: Introduction to The Essence of Christianity from The Fiery Brook by Ludwig Feuerbach AND Christianity and Heathenism chapter from The Essence of Christianity by Ludwig Feuerbach

16. März: Feuerbach: Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlooks chapter from The German Ideology by Marx-Engels

23. März: Chapters 1-6 in Dialectics of Labour by Chris Arthur

30. März: Chapters 7-11 in Dialectics of Labour by Chris Arthur

6. April: The Doctrine of Being: Quantity, Quality & Measure in The Encyclopedia of Logic by Hegel

13. April: §112-131 from chapter The Doctrine of Essence in The Encyclopedia of Logic by Hegel 

20. April: §132-159 from chapter The Doctrine of Essence in The Encyclopedia of Logic by Hegel

27. April: Marx, Hegel and the Value-Form by Chris Arthur

Third Perspective: Approaching Conditioning, Economically

WK1: Willing Slaves of Capital (PT.I) by Frédéric Lordon

WK2: Willing Slaves of Capital (PT.I) by Frédéric Lordon

WK3: Selected Chapters from The Making of the Indebted Man by Maurizio Lazzarato

WK4: Misery and Debt by ENDNOTES

PAST PERSPECTIVES (from autumn 2015):

First Perspective: Approaching Conditioning, Linguistically. Texts by Wilfrid Sellars.

14. Okt: Meaning as Functional Classification
21. Okt: Language as Thought and as Communication
28. Okt: Behaviorism, Language and Meaning
4. Nov: Language, Rules and Behavior

11. Nov: Discussion with Ray Brassier via skype on Wilfrid Sellars

Second perspective:
Approaching Conditioning of Sexuality and Gender

25. Nov: Text by Endnotes The Logic of Gender

2. Dec: Texts by Monique Wittig
The Category of Sex
One Is Not Born a Woman
The Straight Mind

9. Dec Texts by Shulamith Firestone
Dialectics of Sex
The Ultimate Revolution: Demands and Speculations

16. Dec Text by Paul B. Preciado
TECHNOGENDER

Please RSVP for each session to info@nkprojekt.de. We will then provide the reading materials. There is no cost to attend and is open to people of any field. Organized by Mattin, Sacha Kahir, Farahnaz Hatam, Colin Hacklander & NK. Location: NK Projekt. Start Time: 18:00. End Time: 21:00.