Friday 17th we did a Dj / Vj set in the café au the Beurschouwburg, for the Cimatics festival, a 3 day audio visual event.
The Beurschouwburg is an art centre located in huge building in the middle of Brussels, and although these days it’s not at it’s highest, it was in the 90’s and beginning of the 2000, a really interesting space and a plateform for avant-guarde music & performance, with some excellent parties.
We wanted to reflect this in our set by exploring the geographical location and the artistic history of the Beurs. Télésiège was on the visuals and +nurse on the decks.
After 12 hours of frantic practising and working the idea out, we turned up with a visual exploration of a vectorised map of the Beurs and it’s neighbourhood. Télésiège, using the program Illustrator, moved around the vectorised lines and streets zooming in and out, modifying the the grid and colours while nurse layered minimal techno to soundscapes, stories about the neighbourhood and performance/art soundtracks.
We started off with an interview downloaded from the Bna-Bbot website, its an organisation which collects interviews and conversations about the city.
http://www.bna-bbot.net
The interview was about the Beurs and the Brussels musical scene. To this was added soundscapes by François Bayle end Luc Ferrari along to techno classics of the 90’s: Beaumont Hannant and Autechre.Then we went down the voice lane with works by Lettrist artists (working with performance and voice) and Minimal techno tracks from the following labels: Catenaccio – pneu – monolake/imbalance computer music – Supposé – Freud-am-Tanzen – Areal…
The set went smoothly the only problem was that we took over from Djs that were in a totally different world and mood, so as they say over here: “we fell like a hair in the soup”. 🙂
It’s sometimes tricky picking a party up when you don’t know the style of the previous DJ and you’re working on a specific project (as a duo) with precise timing.
We didn’t expect to land in that kind of atmosphere at all, I guess we expected the audience to be ready for something maybe a bit different as it was a part of the festival. Ok, it’s maybe optimistic to bring Diamanda Gallà s and Kurt Schwitters onto a dancefloor at 2 in the morning, along to some eastern techno freak, yet I feel the challenge is worth it, including these excellent pieces of history to the dancefloor is what drives me to push the record. It’s not about intellectualising the space, but considering it as a precious place and a chance to get some dusty museum pieces out of the cupboard and challenge the ears with some acutely cut vynil….it makes me crazy to see the audience giggle their bums screaming along to the Ursonate! Totally Merz!
Ok, sometimes, like last night its not easy, and you get those girls screaming over the decks that they want African music or Soul/Funk…