Five artists from different disciplines share the stage to put into music and voice, for the first time, the powerful text of Antonin Artaud (1896-1948), from an unpublished manuscript, written during his internment at the asylum in Rodez, acquired by the Departmental Archives of Ave
"Here is the text that I have just composed.
There is no doubt that this is a musical score, where every sound makes sense and vice versa. This score is a formidable support of investigation for the modellers and players of sounds that are the musicians Sophie Gonthier, My Cat Is An Alien, Lee Ranaldo and Jean-Marc Montera. Cries, breaths, borborygms, onomatopoeias, scansions... are articulated within a harmony in perpetual mutation to create a ritual from which one cannot escape. It establishes a poetic of the uppercut which confronts us inexorably with the precariousness of our certainties.
The text Khabar Enis - Kathar Esti, a true enigmatic poem, carries all the strength and rage of Artaud's words, witnesses of the crisis of his spirit. Dead 70 years ago, the poet has never disappeared. More than ever, this unclassifiable work continues to question us and to amaze us.
Partnership
Friche la Belle de Mai
Executive productions
GMEM
A French guitarist with a rock background, specializing in free improvisation and sound experimentation, Jean-Marc Montera uses the entire range of amplified and acoustic strings - resonance, percussion, distortion, extensions and detour of all kinds. Among the most active musicians in the field of improvised music, he has been multiplying his encounters and contacts with other artistic worlds since the 1970s, to the point of blurring the "barrier" between genres.
Sophie Gonthier
vocalist
Born in Marseille, Sophie Gonthier is inspired by her clubbing culture and her activity as a DJ. She combines electronic and pop music, in French and English. Her songs, built like different scenes of a movie, explore her wanderings through the urban jungle of a fantasized Paris, and offer the uncompromising view of a Mediterranean woman on the life of the metropolis. In 2019, she created the label Verticale and released a compilation in partnership with the Parisian collective Barbieturix. Her 1st single and clip under this pseudonym, shot in Marseille I Don't Fit In was released on June 4, 2021. She is currently working on her first album. The Marseilles native has already made a name for herself under the alias Anything Maria, a project unanimously recognized by the press (Inrocks, Libération, Télérama, etc...). In the meantime, she also released several tracks, remixes and techno mixtapes under the pseudonym Catherin with the agency Miala. She also collaborated with many artists, in particular Jean-Marc Montera with whom she forms since its beginnings the duet The Room and who invited her on his double album Women of the beat generation at the sides of Fanny Paccoud, Lee Ranaldo, Ernie Brooks... She also collaborated with Nan Goldin, Genesis P. Orridge or still Yuksek...
Lee Ranaldo
guitarist
Lee Ranaldo co-founded Sonic Youth in 1981 and has been active for 40 years as a composer, performer, and producer; exhibiting visual art and publishing several books of reviews, poetry, and writings about music.New solo acoustic composition In Virus Times was released in November 2021 on Mute Records.
My Cat Is An Alien
musicians
My Cat Is An Alien (MCIAA) is the duo of composers, musicians, performers and visual artists created by brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio in Turin, Italy in 1998.MCIAA refer to their music as "Spiritual Noise"; iconoclastic and globally recognized as highly innovative ("future, future, future" - David Keenan), philosophical and poetic ("a music to transcend the pain of this world" - El Pais).Multi-instrumentalists, they play homemade string instruments and electronic devices that they modify ("Alientronics"), alongside the distinctly wordless vocals of Roberto Opalio.The bulk of MCIAA's work includes collaborations with avant-garde artists such as Sonic Youth, Christian Marclay, Keiji Haino, Jim O'Rourke, about 200 recordings, coverage of The Wire, international festivals, art exhibitions, the 2017 opening of the Venice Art Biennale.In 2021, MCIAA co-authored with Philippe Robert the book Free Jazz Manifesto (Editions Lenka lente) and a tribute album to Sun Ra.
GMEM (Friche la Belle de Mai)
41 Jobin Street13003
Marseille
DURATION
1h00 approx.
RATES
Full : 8 €
Reduced : 6 €
Evening pass : 10€*
*Including A Modest Opera at 5:00 pm
Sophie Gonthier
voices, laptop
My Cat Is An Alien : Maurizio and Roberto Opalio
homemade stringed instrument and percussions, electronics, vocalizations without words
Lee Ranaldo
guitar and electronics
Jean-Marc Montera
guitar and electronics