Online video documenting the entire Centre Pompidou XS: The Opera Opus: An Operatic Transvaluation of No Wave Aesthetics by Joseph Nechvatal and Rhys Chatham event

A video documenting the entire Centre Pompidou March 8th XS: The Opera Opus: An Operatic Transvaluation of No Wave Aesthetics by Joseph Nechvatal and Rhys Chatham event ~ organized by Nicolas Ballet ~ has been published online at the Centre Pompidou website HERE.

Works screened during the March 8th session:

-Karole Armitage, Rhys Chatham, Vertige, 1979, 2 min 23 s (excerpt).

-Karole Armitage, Rhys Chatham, Drastic-Classicism, 1981, 1 min 40 s (excerpt)

-Rhys Chatham, Drastic Classical Music for Electric Instruments, 1981, 1 min (excerpt)

-Joseph Nechvatal, When Things Get Rough on Easy Street, 1982, 2 min 34 s. À partir d’un extrait de Guitar Trio (1977) composed by Rhys Chatham (drums : David Linton, guitars : Nina Canal, Rhys Chatham and Joe Dizney, mix : Peter Gordon)

-Joseph Nechvatal, ExStasis Ovid, 1983, 2 min 29 s. The soundtrack is from an excerpt from Babbling Tongues of Metamorphoses (1986), which Joseph Nechvatal composed from a recording of the reading of Ovid’s Metamorphoses by American actress and opera singer Jane Lawrence Smith

-Rhys Chatham, Joseph Nechvatal, XS exemplification of XS the Opera 2022, 10 min 17 s, sound slide-show

-Joseph Nechvatal, Viral Venture, 2009, 6 min 19 s (excerpt). Animation with Rhys Chatham (music) and Stéphane Sikora (application development)

This event, moderated by curator Nicolas Ballet, discussed the eight part No Wave art music performance series, XS: The Opera Opus, created by Nechvatal and Chatham between 1984 and 1986 and explored the various sources of creation that led to the development of this multi-disciplinary No Wave scene. Its sets were consistently created by Nechvatal by projecting 35 mm cross-faded slides of his drawings onto the stage. Its final and most complete 90-minute realization were three nights of performance called XSThe Opera Opus that took place April 10, 11, 12 in 1986 at The Boston Shakespeare Theater. It consisted of three soprano singers, four trumpets, six electric guitars. bass, drums with dance choreography by Yves Musard. Nechvatal made the XS costumes from fabric printed with his drawings at The Fabric Workshop in Philadelphia.

“The figure-ground relationships of the costumed figures and background sets of XS are complex in their visual cacophony but subtly unified. Thus complementing the musical compositional style of Mr. Chatham. Like the sound of his multiple electric guitar compositions, the look of XS can remain interestingly hypnotic over an extended period of time by not overly dictating visual specificities. As such, XS explores the visualization approach to art in opposition to the dominant reductive mode. […] The look of XS breaks down the given popular signs of the time in order to liquidate their meanings so as to address the spiritual conditions of contemporary life, the excessiveness of contemporary electronics, nuclear weapon overload, and the proliferation of ideological information. But XS is not fundamentally literary. It is primarily about conceptual linkage; as a seamless flow of intuitive imagery dreams of a technological and ideological reality that blends over-ripeness with minimal concision. In XS, Mr. Chatham’s music is the primary dramatic element and the scenery the text. Performed dramatic action is subordinated to internal rumination because XS turns culture inward; away from the bourgeois world and its standards to a more personnel, private and extra-ordinary world. That is why XS depicts no human confrontation, no satire, no attack. The normal world is merely dissolved into a beatific vision of ecstatic peace through the melting together of figure-ground oppositions.”

~from Nechvatal’s XSThe Opera Opus original program notes

If this gets you in the No Wave mood ~ the 1 hour February 9th dublab No Wave music radio show I curated in support of the Pompidou show has been archived HERE. I also choose music for, and am interviewed on, the radio show Krachwald #26: No Wave Time Warp now online HERE.

Biographies:

Joseph Nechvatal (born in Chicago) is an American transdisciplinary artist currently living in Paris who creates virus-modeled artificial life paintings, animations, and sound works. Themes he has addressed in his art include the apocalyptic, excess, the viral, gender fluidity, and computer-robotics. His sound art cassette Selected Sound Works and vinyl double LP The Viral Tempest has recently been released on the music label Pentiments. Nechvatal also writes art theory, criticism and poetry. His theory/history book Immersion Into Noise received a second publication in 2022 and his second book of poetry Styling SagaciousnessOh Great No! was published by punctum books also in 2022, a year in which he exhibited new paintings at Galerie Richard in Paris in a solo exhibition called Turning the Viral Tempest.

Rhys Chatham is a composer and multi-instrumentalist from Manhattan, currently living in Paris, who fused avant-garde minimalism with the electric crunch of punk rock. Chatham’s instrumentation ranges from the seminal composition composed in 1977 entitled Guitar Trio for 3 electric guitars, electric bass and drums, to the epoch evening-length work for 100 electric guitars, An Angel Moves Too Fast to See, composed in 1989… all the way to Chatham’s recent composition for 200 electric guitars, A Crimson Grail, last performed in Birmingham, UK at Town Hall in 2014, to the Sydney Festival in 2018 with a new piece for 100 electric guitars, A Secret Rose. Chatham is currently touring as a solo performer, and in duo with guitarist David Fenech; a recording will be released in April 2023 on Klang Galerie (Vienna).

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XS: the Opera (1984-1986)

XS exemplification of XS the No Wave Opera (1984-1986) by Rhys Chatham and Joseph Nechvatal ~ made for and included in the No Wave show Who You Staring At: Culture visuelle de la scène no wave des années 1970 et 1980 at Centre Pompidou in Paris 2023

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My historical review / noise music theory paper on the intonarumori noise music machines of Futurist painter/composer Luigi Russolo published in PULSE: the Journal of Science and Culture VOLUME 9


my historical review / noise music theory paper on the intonarumori noise music machines of Futurist painter/composer Luigi Russolo ~ along with a chronicle of known recordings of the intonarumori ~ contextualize the Czech ensemble Opening Performance Orchestra’s recording The Noise Of Art: Works for Intonarumori at PULSE: the Journal of Science and Culture VOLUME 9 online HERE: https://www.pulse-journal.org/_files/ugd/b096b2_011c808d8c744ae2807e5cc475250d56.pdf

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NO WAVE Audiometric radio show Vol. 3 curated by Joseph Nechvatal & Black Sifichi


NO WAVE – Vol. 3 

Audiometric radio show

tracks curated by Joseph Nechvatal & Black Sifichi
mixed by Black Sifichi 

March 4, 2023

Audiometric broadcast weekly on 5 Independent French FM stations : 
– 
Jet FM 91.2 Nantes [Samedi 21:00]  
Aligre FM 93.1 Paris [Samedi Soir 22:30]  
Radio Active 100 FM Toulon [Samedi 21:00]  
Eko des Garrigues 88.5 Montpellier [Dimanche 20:00]  
Radio Grenouille 88.8 FM Marseille [Dimanche Minuit]  
– 
Archives & the Podcasts: https://www.mixcloud.com/BlackSifichi 
– 
the playlist :— 
– 
ESG – Moody (Spaced Out) 
Patti Smith – Jesus Christ 
Ike Yard – M. Kurtz 
Mudmen – Disco Inferno (pitched) 
Joseph Nechvatal – Crown of Thorns (1981) 
The Static (Drums – Christine Hahn, Guitar – Barbara Ess, Guitar,Vocals – Glenn Branca) – Don’t Let Me Stop You 
Sonic Youth – Early American 
The Girls – The Elephant Man 
James White & the Blacks – Contort Yourself (August Darnell Mix) 
Mars – Immediate Stages of the Erotic 
Au Pairs – Dear John 
Barbara Ess and Peggy Awesh – Radio Guitar 3 Three 
Alan Vega – Saturn Drive 
DNA – Size 
Black Sifichi Ukraine Radio Surfing – Fev 27 2022 via Radio Garden 
Sonic Youth – NYC Ghosts & Flowers 
David Byrne – Cage and the Long Island Expressway / Enlightened Whistler 
James White & The Blacks – Off Black 
The Grief – Lilou Can Dance Too 
Black Sifichi Ukraine Radio Surfing – Fev 27 2022 via Radio Garden 
Rhys Chatham – Excerpt from XS 
ESG – Dance 
Tim Schellenbaum – El Baile de la Penitencia Dolorosa 
Bush Tetras – Too Many Creeps 
WEACE repet jeudi feat Black Sifichi – Life During Wartime 
Lydia Lunch and Lucy Hamilton – Lucy’s Lost Her Head Again 
Pulsallama – Ungawa Pt.2 (Way Out Guyana) Remix 
Malaria! – Your Turn to Run (I Will be Your only One) 

Fin

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Cashmere radio show (with Joseph Nechvatal interview) celebrating the No Wave exhibition Who You Staring At? at the Centre Pompidou Paris

On the occasion of the exhibition Who You Staring At? at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, I & Paul Paulun discuss on Berlin-based Cashmere Radio aspects of No Wave related to the musical tracks we pick and play.

Tracks played:

1) Loose Joints – Pop Your Funk

2) The Static – Live at Riverside Studios (Extract 5)

3) 3 Teens Kill 4 – Stay and Fight

4) YouthInAsia – Talking Heads

5) Lee Ranaldo – The Bridge

6) DNA – Blonde Redhead

7) Jill Kroesen – I Am Not Seeing That You’re Here

8) Rhys Chatham – Guitar Trio

9) Walter Steding – Shout

10) Mars – 3E

11) Joseph Nechvatal – Crown of Thorns

12) Bush Tetras – Snakes Crawl

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On Marquis de Sade’s manuscript for Les 120 journées de Sodome (The Hundred Twenty Days of Sodom)

I wrote a short report on the conference Papier en restauration : le rouleau des 120 Journées de Sodome at the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal (1, rue de Sully, Paris) on the restoration of Marquis de Sade’s Les 120 journées de Sodome ou l’école du libertinage (The Hundred Twenty Days of Sodom or the School of Libertinage) for Whitehot Magazine here: https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/saving-120-days-sodom/5700

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XS: The Opera Opus: An Operatic Transvaluation of No Wave Aesthetics by Joseph Nechvatal and Rhys Chatham / March 8 / Centre Pompidou Paris / Cinema 2

~ on March 8 ~ at 7pm ~ at the Centre Pompidou Paris Cinema 2 ~ I will be in conversation (in English) with art historian Nicolas Ballet ~ curator of the No Wave exhibition Who You Staring At? Visual culture of the no wave scene in the 1970s and 1980s now on till May 1st on the 4th floor ~ and composer Rhys Chatham ~ about our XS: The Opera Opus project created downtown during 1984-1986 in New York City. This conversation ~ with large screen projections ~ is free ~ first come first serve open cinema seating. The full title of the evening (7-9pm) on niveau 1 is XS: The Opera Opus: An Operatic Transvaluation of No Wave Aesthetics by Joseph Nechvatal and Rhys Chatham. ~

WEDNESDAY March 8th at 7 PM – 9 PM
XS: An Operatic Transvaluation of No Wave Aesthetics by Joseph Nechvatal and Rhys Chatham at Centre PompidouParis
~~~~~
https://www.centrepompidou.fr/en/program/calendar/event/GKIsi5r
~~~~~
Cette séance de projection et de discussion aborde l’opéra no wave en huit parties XS: The Opera Opus – conçu par l’artiste Joseph Nechvatal et le musicien Rhys Chatham entre 1984 et 1986 – afin d’étudier les différentes sources de création qui ont conduit à l’élaboration d’une pièce pluridisciplinaire, évoluant dans les scènes alternatives américaines des années 1980.
L’œuvre conceptuelle XS explore l’excès de l’accumulation d’armes nucléaires sous la présidence de Ronald Reagan. Les décors sont conçus par Joseph Nechvatal à partir de ses dessins agrandis et projetés sur scène à l’aide de diapositives 35 mm. Sa version finale et la plus complète, d’une durée de 90 minutes, consiste en trois soirées de spectacle intitulées XS: The Opera Opus, les 10, 11 et 12 avril 1986 au Boston Shakespeare Theater. Cette version se compose de trois chanteurs sopranos, quatre trompettes, six guitares électriques, une basse, une batterie et une chorégraphie conçue par Yves Musard. Nechvatal réalise les costumes de XS à partir de ses dessins qu’il fait imprimer sur du tissu au Fabric Workshop de Philadelphie.
______________________________________________________
« Les relations figure-fond entre les personnages costumés et les décors de XS sont complexes dans leur cacophonie visuelle, mais subtilement unifiées. Elles complètent les compositions musicales de Rhys Chatham. Comme le son de ses compositions aux multiples guitares électriques, l’apparence de XS crée un effet hypnotisant sur le long terme à partir d’un brouillage visuel global. En tant que tel, XS explore l’approche de la visualisation de l’art en opposition au mode réducteur dominant. […] Le regard de XS décompose les signes populaires donnés de l’époque pour liquider leurs significations afin d’aborder les conditions spirituelles de la vie contemporaine, la démesure de l’ère électronique, la surcharge des armes nucléaires et la prolifération de l’information idéologique. Mais XS n’est pas fondamentalement littéraire. Il s’agit avant tout d’un lien conceptuel, comme un flux continu d’images intuitives qui rêvent d’une réalité technologique et idéologique mêlant sur-maturité et concision minimale. Dans XS, la musique de Rhys Chatham est le principal élément dramatique avec la scénographie. L’action dramatique est subordonnée à la rumination interne, puisque XS tourne la culture vers l’intérieur, loin du monde bourgeois et de ses normes, vers un monde plus personnel, plus privé et plus extraordinaire. C’est pourquoi XS ne présente aucune confrontation humaine, aucune satire, aucune attaque. Le monde normal est simplement dissous dans une vision béatifique de paix extatique par la fusion des oppositions figure-fond. »
Citation issue du programme de XS: The Opera Opus.
______________________________________________________
Films projetés :
– Karole Armitage, Rhys Chatham, Drastic-Classicism, 1981, 1 min 40 s (extrait).
– Joseph Nechvatal, When Things Get Rough on Easy Street, 1982, 2 min 34 s. À partir d’un extrait de Guitar Trio (1977) composé par Rhys Chatham (batterie : David Linton, guitares : Nina Canal, Rhys Chatham et Joe Dizney, mixage : Peter Gordon).
– Joseph Nechvatal, ExStasis Ovid, 1983, 2 min 29 s. La bande sonore provient d’un extrait de Babbling Tongues of Metamorphoses (1986), que Joseph Nechvatal compose à partir d’un enregistrement de la lecture des Métamorphoses d’Ovide par l’actrice et chanteuse d’opéra américaine Jane Lawrence Smith.
– Rhys Chatham, Joseph Nechvatal, XS exemplification of XS: The Opera Opus (1984-1986), 2022, 10 min 17 s, diaporama sonore.
– Joseph Nechvatal, Viral Venture, 2009, 6 min 19 s (extrait). Animation avec Rhys Chatham (musique) et Stéphane Sikora (développement d’application).
______________________________________________________
Biographies :
Joseph Nechvatal (né à Chicago en 1951) est un artiste transdisciplinaire vivant à Paris. Il crée des tableaux et animations à l’aide d’une simulation de vie artificielle de virus modeli-sés par ordinateur. Les thèmes abordés dans son œuvre incluent : l’apocalypse, les excès de la communication, les virus, la fluidité de genre et l’informatique-robotique. Il a récemment publié sa cassette audio Selected Sound Works et son double vinyle The Viral Tempest sur le label musical Pentiments. Nechvatal écrit également des textes dans le champ de la théorie de l’art, de la critique et de la poésie. Son livre Immersion Into Noise a fait l’objet d’une deuxième publication en 2022 et son deuxième recueil de poésie Styling Sagacious-ness: Oh Great No! a été publié par punctum books la même année, durant laquelle il a ex-posé de nouvelles peintures à la Galerie Richard à Paris dans le cadre d’une exposition per-sonnelle intitulée « Turning the Viral Tempest ».

Rhys Chatham est un compositeur et multi-instrumentiste de Manhattan, vivant actuellement à Paris, qui a fusionné le minimalisme d’avant-garde avec le crunch électrique du punk rock. L’instrumentation de Chatham s’étend de la composition séminale intitulée Guitar Trio (1977), pour trois guitares électriques, une basse et une batterie, en passant par l’œuvre historique d’une soirée An Angel Moves Too Fast to See, composée en 1989 pour cent guitares électriques, jusqu’à la récente composition de Chatham pour deux cents guitares électriques, A Crimson Grail. Cette pièce a été jouée au Town Hall de Birmingham en 2014, puis au Festival de Sydney en 2018 avec une nouvelle pièce pour cent guitares électriques, A Secret Rose. Chatham est actuellement en tournée en solo et en duo avec le guitariste David Fenech ; la sortie d’un enregistrement est prévue en mars 2023 sur le label Klang Galerie (Vienne).
______________________________________________________
Soirée modérée par Nicolas Ballet, attaché de conservation, collection nouveaux médias du Centre Pompidou.
Entrée libre dans la limite des places disponibles.
Plus d’informations : https://www.centrepompidou.fr/…/agenda/evenement/GKIsi5r
______________________________________________________
Dans le cadre de
« Who You Staring At? Culture visuelle de la scène no wave des années 1970 et 1980 »
Du 1er février au 1er mai 2023
Musée, niveau 4, espace des collections vidéo, film, son et œuvres numériques
La présentation « Who You Staring At? Culture visuelle de la scène no wave des années 1970 et 1980 » explore les apports visuels et sonores d’une scène artistique alternative, qui naît dans les quartiers à bas loyers du Lower Manhattan à New York en 1978. L’échec du modèle culturel et économique hippie à la toute fin des années 1960, puis les transformations commerciales de la new wave et du disco poussent les principaux acteurs du mouvement no wave à rompre avec les circuits de l’art contemporain et de l’industrie musicale.
Commissaire : Nicolas Ballet

bdr
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NO WAVE radio show ~ Vol. 2 ~ on Audiometric ~ February 25th 2023

NO WAVE radio show ~ Vol. 2 ~ on Audiometric February 25th 2023 

Tracks selected/curated by Joseph Nechvatal & Black Sifichi

mixed by Black Sifichi

Audiometric broadcast weekly on 5 Independent French FM stations  :

Jet FM 91.2 Nantes [Samedi 21:00]  

Aligre FM 93.1 Paris [Samedi 22:30]  

Radio Active 100 FM Toulon [Samedi 21:00]   

Eko des Garrigues 88.5 Montpellier [Dimanche 20:00]    

Radio Grenouille 88.8 FM Marseille [Dimanche 00:00 Minuit]  

– 

Archives & the Podcastshttps://www.mixcloud.com/BlackSifichi

– 

the playlist :—

– 

Mudmen – Liquid Joe

Mars – Helen Fordsdale

Teenage Jesus & The Jerks – Less of Me

Elliot Sharp – Solitons

James Chance & Terminal City – Devilish Angel

Bush Tetras – Snakes Crawl

Dinosaur L – Clean On Your Bean #1

Au Pairs – It’s Obvious

Rat At Rat R – Assassin

Joseph Nechvatal and Antonin Artaud – 4 pour finir avec le jugement de dieu viral symphOny plague (wOrld whirlwind)

Sonic Youth – Karen Revisited

Thurston Moore – Skrewer Boy

Rhys Chatham – Cadenza

Lydia Lunch – Swamp

Bush Tetras –  Cowboys in Africa

David Wojnarowicz and Doug Bressler – American Dreamtime

The Earwurms – Sex In Het Maïsveld

Suicide – Mr. Ray

Television – See No Evil

The Slits – I Heard It Through the Grapevine

Marc Sloan – Barking Dog

Marc Sloan – Whitey’s On The Moon 

DNA – Lying On The Sofa Of Life

Theoretical Girls – Electronic Angie

Au Pairs – We’re So Cool

Ut – Confidential

Bush Tetras – Can’t Be Funky

Mudmen – Edge of Time (5/4)

fin

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NO WAVE radio show on Audiometric February 18 2023

Joseph Nechvatal, No Wave Heart (1978) ink on paper

Audiometric February 18 2023 

NO WAVE – Vol 1

selected tracks curated by Joseph Nechvatal & Black Sifichi

mixed by Black Sifichi

in support of the the exhibition Who You Staring At? Visual culture of the no wave scene in the 1970s and 1980s at the Centre Pompidou Paris from February 1 – May 1, 2023. For more information see: https://www.centrepompidou.fr/en/collection/films-et-nouveaux-medias/who-you-staring-at

ARCHIVED ONLINE HERE

Audiometric broadcast weekly on 5 Independent French FM stations
Jet FM 91.2 Nantes [Samedi 21:00]  
Aligre FM 93.1 Paris [Samedi Soir 22:30]  
Radio Active 100 FM Toulon [Samedi 21:00]   
Eko des Garrigues 88.5 Montpellier [Dimanche 20:00]    
Radio Grenouille 88.8 FM Marseille [Dimanche Minuit]  

Archives & the Podcasts https://www.mixcloud.com/BlackSifichi

– 

the playlist :—

– 

Glenn Branca – Lesson No. 1

Sonic Youth – Rain On Tin

Barbara Ess (with Barbara Barg) – You Who Know No Pain

Gray – Drum Mode

Bush Tetras – Out Again

Au Pairs – Headache — for Michelle

Mudmen – Let it Go [7″] 

Lee Ranaldo – The Bridge

James White & The Blacks – Almost Black

Theoretical Girls – Europe Man

DNA – New New

Mars – 11.000 Volts

3 Teens Kill 4 – Hold Up

Mars LES – Monopoly

The Static – Live at Riverside Studios

Defunkt – Defunkt

Talking Heads – Psycho Killer

Mark Stewart – MS 02

Al Diaz – What’s in a Name

Ut – Sharktown

David Linton – Shattering Glass

ESG – Step Off 

Lounge Lizards – Demented

Palo Alto (feat. Rhys Chatham) – Difference et Repetition 

Lydia Lunch – Lady Scarface

fin

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No Wave radio show curated by Joseph Nechvatal

A No Wave radio show https://www.dublab.com/schedule/100869/frosty-celsius-drop-90 I curated, followed by an interview with DNA drummer Ikue Mori, in support of Who You Staring At?: Visual culture of the no wave scene in the 1970s and 1980s ~ at the Centre Pompidou Paris ~ aired on dublab.com Thursday, Feb 9th from 10am-Noon (LA) / 1-3pm (NYC) / 7-9pm (Paris).

The show is archived on their website here: https://www.dublab.com/archive/frosty-w-joseph-nechvatal-ikue-mori-celsius-drop-no-wave-special-02-09-23

Tracks:
1) Patti Smith, Prayer
2) Patti Smith, Free Money
3) Boris Policeband, Tow Away
4) Rhys Chatham, Guitar Trio (1977) (recorded live in 1979)
5) The Static, My Relationship
6) DNA, Lionel
7) James Chance & The Contortions, Flip Your Face
8) Mars, Helen Fordsdale
9) Lounge Lizards, Demented
10) Mofungo, End of the World
11) Y Pants, Magnetic Attraction
12) Teenage Jesus and The Jerks, Red Alert
13) Theoretical Girls, Theoretical Girls
14) Ut, Sharktown
15) Live Skull, Pulverized By Gratitude
16) Glenn Branca, Light Field (In Consonance)
17) Sonic Youth, Kill Yr. Idols
18) Fugazi, Bad Mouth
19) Bush Tetras, Out Again

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