A lot of Blogger uses who host their own blogs have been running into strange errors for nearly a week. Because these problems have been unresolved and there has been no word from the officials at Blogger, I have decided to jump ship and go with WordPress. I will be doing the same with Spreading Like Wings sometime this week.

There will be a fair bit of work needed to get it set up exactly the way I want it, but at the moment, I hope this default theme and the few widgets I have installed in the sidebar will be a decent substitution. Hopefully, your RSS feed should redirect to this location. If it doesn’t, or if you find any other errors in general, please leave a comment here.

First impressions? I like it here a lot more. There’s a bit more to learn, and it’s not as immediately customizable, but there is definitely more potential to make a nicer looking web page with ease. What are your thoughts?

Here’s a review of the Chauvel Cinematheque’s screening of Le Brasier Ardent (The Fiery Furnace) by Pia Santaklaus taken from the Chauvel Cinematheque blog.

Le Braissive Denture by Pia Santaklaus
23 Densemble 2008

Saturday 20 December 2008: Cinemateque put on a very fine program ‘THE FILMS OF IVAN MOSJOUKINE’. A truly great superstar of his day, perhaps the reason Mosjoukine keeps fading away is because his name is so difficult for Westerners to remember and to pronounce. Think ‘Charlie Chaplin’…unforgettable!

Anyway, it was a real treat to have film historian and fanatic Barrie Pattison present his immaculately unearthed and researched material. Barrie’s sense of history, purity and purpose put the remarkable and complex Ivan Mosjoukine back into perspective. Barrie’s seemingly encyclopedic knowledge never ceases to amaze me. As always, curator Brett Garten did a beautiful job with the screening of the various bits and pieces and bringing the whole thing together. Thank you Barrie! Thank you Brett!

Monday night, 22 December 2008 saw the follow-up program with a presentation screening of a full-length film starring and directed by Ivan Mosjoukine himself. LE BRAISIER ARDENT (1923). After all these years this film maintains a strong visual impact. It had something for everyone; all in one movie Mosjoukine managed to define himself in guises as diverse as a dashing gentleman, a pious Bishop, a professional psychiatrist, a gothic warlock, a dark vampiric presence (he resembles Bela Lugosi), and of course as a sentimental, foolish, infatuated lover.

The film itself is defined through blocks and flashes of surrealism, nightmarish underworlds, beautiful topography, elegant boudoirs, complex sets and gorgeous cutting-edge designs of the times.

According to expert Barrie Pattison, the original film was run at a slower speed. Tonight, we watched it at a faster pace that purists might find unacceptable and so Barrie wasn’t there for this presentation to help with some of the translations required. His absence was an upset. Regardless, the film moved along very nicely and the picture quality of this print was absolutely remarkable considering the age of the film.

Furthermore, the audience was lucky to be treated to a new, live soundtrack, provided by young and upcoming talented pianist Adrian Clement. Only 18 years of age, this usually reserved composer took to the piano with a forthright and comfortable energy. He owned the keyboard like a young Franz Liszt, improvising much of the music and bringing a fresh, youthful bounce to the film. Much of the time the music married flawlessly with the images. Adrian’s ability to confidently play through long stretches was admirable.

At one point he introduced a second ‘voice’ with some eerie, spectral, prerecorded sounds. Together with the piano, it was an awe-inspiring moment. With his relentless strong left hand ‘plonking’ and ‘skipping’ onto the lower keys and his right hand playing emotional changes, Adrian provided the necessary momentum and spaces necessary. His score was at once reminiscent of classic silent-era scores and yet with a modern vitality that helped move the film along. His chords were firm, edgy and risky… At no point did it get boring. My one, minor criticism is that he might do better to pull back and create a more sentimental, open and delicate pieces of music specifically for romantic scenes. This was only evident in the last few minutes of the film.

The story, about a suspicious-jealous husband who hires a psychiatrist to convert his woman’s passion for Paris into a fear of the ‘City of Love’, called for something neo-classical, looming and ‘up’. Adrian provided an appropriate brisk hit.

All in all, a fantastic musical debut for Adrian at the Chauvel and I look forward to hearing him again accompanying the upcoming silent film FANTOMAS.

In closing I must thank curator Brett Garten for his tireless dedication and his ability to bring together so many great complex elements.

Pia Santaklaus

The Chauvel Cinema

Inside the Chauvel Cinema

First and foremost, thanks to everyone who came last night to see a screening of Ivan Mosjukine’s wonderful 1923 silent film Le Brasier Ardent (The Fiery Furnace), for which I took care of the score. For the first time attempting something like this, I had an utmost blast and cannot thank enough the people that organized this and made this happen, particularly Brett Garten, who programs and curates the Chauvel Cinematheque. And even though he walked out and attended Madagascar 2 instead of doing the translated intertitles he had tirelessly prepared due to an argument over the “unacceptable” 16mm projection, my thanks extends to Barrie Pattison, who suggested and prompted the screening.

Fantomas Original Book Cover

Magritte Posing as Fantomas

Now for some more good news. On the 12th of January I will be doing a score for another silent film, this time a French 1914s motion picture serial called Fantômas. If you enjoyed Le Brasier Ardent, you’re bound to love this. For more info, download or look at the Chauvel Cinematheque program below.

Chauvel Cinematheque Program Jan-Feb Page 1

Chauvel Cinematheque Program Jan-Feb Page 2

I wrote a short article/write-up on Albie Thoms’ Marinetti, which was screened at the Chauvel Cinematheque last week. You can check it out at this location, or you can just read it below (where I’ve cut and pasted it):

Albie Thoms

Marinetti

Albie Thoms’ 1968 experimental Australian film Marinetti, was screened at the Chauvel Cinema on two dates as part of the excellent Chauvel Cinematheque, curated by Brett Garten, and included two short films, including Futurism, a 1971 historical documentary on the Italian Futurists directed by Guido Guerassio, and Boccioni’s Bike, a 1981 animation directed by Skip Battaglia. Seeing how I suggested this program, I thought it is fitting that I write a short article outlining my thoughts on it, having now seen it.

Experimental Writing by Marinetti

For starters, I think that it’s important to state that Thoms sees his film Marinetti as a tribute or homage to the Italian Futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944), who’s 1908/9 “Futurist Manifesto” kick-started a revolutionary nationalist movement which spanned a wide range of mediums such as painting and sculpture and sound art (Luigi Russolo’s manifesto “The Art of Noises” [1913] and his highly unique and unusual instruments that captured industrial and mechanic sounds are usually what critics point to as the first instance of intentional “noise music”). As the film is a tribute or homage, we can deduce that the film has ties to the Futurist movement in some capacity, whether that be stylistically, structurally, aesthetically and so on.

Russolo's Intonarumori

In twenty minutes, Guerassio seemed to provide a very good overview of the Italian Futurist movement, outlining some of its major artists, historical developments and ideas (including those imbued in Marinetti’s manifesto). It also summed up quite well an idea developed in Futurism which Thoms adopted for Marinetti. In 2003, Thoms stated, in interview with Danni Zuvela for Senses of Cinema, that, in Marinetti, he “adopted the Futurist notion of minimalisation of plot and characterisation”. This gives way to an experience that is largely non-verbal and highly subjective which bypasses verbalised pigeonholing. This was the intention of filmmaker Stanely Kubrick for his brilliant 2001: A Space Odyssey (released in 1968, coincidentally the same year as Thoms’ Marinetti), who in an interview with Playboy Magazine from 1968 argued that verbalising a single message would shackle an audience “to a reality other than their own” and “erect an artificial barrier between conception and appreciation.”

Umberto Boccioni's Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913)

On a stylistic and artistic level, Battaglia’s Boccioni’s Bike was as much a tribute or homage to the painter and sculptor Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916) as Albie Thoms’ film Marinetti was to Marinetti. In his adventurous nine minute animation, Battaglia depicts a cyclist in a style that alludes to the dynamism of form and style quintessential in Futurist painting and sculpture.The image of a bicycle is pivotal as it references an event which influenced Marinetti’s decision to write the “Futurist Manifesto”. In 1908, Marinetti was involved in a small car accident, after trying to avoid two cyclists on a road just outside Milan. Helping himself out of the ditch, Marinetti vowed to “destroy the museums, the libraries, every type of academy”. He wrote that the Futurists “will glorify war - the world’s only hygiene - militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman.”

Above everything thing else I appreciated and enjoyed about Thoms’ Marinetti was its brilliant score. Thoms employed “blank verse voice-over narration as part of a sound montage” which mangled together with experimental and/or psychedelic rock music and a large palette of non-musical sound sources. Contextually, Marinetti was released roughly the same era as “The Gift” by The Velvet Underground from White Light/White Heat (1968), which is considered an experimental track because it combined spoken word with rock music, and likewise the same era as Frank Zappa’s avant-rock compositions, which played with language in a similar way to Thoms (but perhaps not as extreme).

In conclusion, just as Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) was a translation of Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness (1899) from a Belgian-Congo era context to a Vietnam War context, Marinetti is as if Thoms was looking at 1960s Australia quite literally through the lens of a Futurist. Today I spoke with Brett Garten about how the film was received on its second screening. Roughly forty years since the film was first screen it still received the same response, with half of the audience walking out according to Brett. This time around however, most of the people who left were still hanging about outside until it finished to discuss the film, conveying a much higher level of interest in the film that was perhaps non-existent 40 years prior from an Australian audience.

Experimental Music: Audio Explorations in Australia

UNSW Press have recently published an excellent book titled Experimental Music: Audio Explorations in Australia edited by Gail Priest, which comes with an accompanying CD. Here’s a description of the book:

Written by artists, producers and participants in alternative music-making, and including a companion CD, Experimental Music: audio explorations in Australia explores the development of forms, ideas and scenes from the 1970s to the present. It brings together a wide range of musical experimentation, from post-punk, noise, appropriation, electronic dance and listening music, to free improv, computer process music, experimental radio, instrument building and audiovisual fusions. Experimental Music illustrates how these forms have influenced each other to create a fertile and diverse musical culture in Australia, and highlights why it is vital to question, experiment and break the rules.
Here you will find additional information, images, sound and video files to further augment the publication. Material will continue to be added over the following months.

Experimental Music: audio explorations in Australia, will be published by UNSW Press in November 2008
RRP $29.95 - ordering information

Experimental Music: audio explorations in Australia is one of a series of books commissioned by the Music Board of the Australia Council.

If you haven’t already picked up a copy, make sure that you do.

In addition to the book, the editor is putting together a growing directory of Australian experimental music makers. If you follow this link, you’ll find my listing, with a bit of a biography, artistic statement and a link back to this blog for footage of Dimensions.

The Many Faces of Mosjoukine

And lastly, just a reminder: Brett Garten and the Chauvel Cinematheque will be hosting a presentation by film historian Barrie Pattison on the life and work of Ivan Mosjoukine tomorrow Saturday, the 20th of December at 12:00 PM. Following up from this presentation will be a rare screening of Ivan Mosjoukine’s Le Brasier Ardent (The Fiery Furnace) at 6:30 PM sharp, featuring a score which I will perform live and supervise. Make sure to come if you’re in the area.

Le Brasier Ardent Flyer

On Monday the 22nd of December, I will be supervising and performing a new live score for Ivan Mosjoukine’s 1923 French silent film Le Brasier Ardent at The Chauvel as part of the Cinematheque program curated by Brett Garten. The film will also be receiving a new live translation by film historian Barrie Pattison, who is doing a special presentation on Mosjoukine on Saturday the 20th of December.

Make sure you come and check this out if you’re in the area. Show starts at 6:30 PM sharp. Tickets cost $18/15, which entitles you to a month of screenings at The Chauvel and lets you bring in a guest for free. Click on the flyer above to enlarge it.

This is some footage of the third and final performance I have done this year at the College of Fine Arts. The title of the work is Dimensions, and is the natural progression on from a sound-project I mentioned here some time ago.

Dimensions:

Dimensions from Adrian Clement on Vimeo.

Here’s the description I gave of Dimensions on Vimeo:

A sound art piece by Adrian Clement performed at the College of Fine Arts in 2008 with Jimmy Wynen and Alex Robinson.

This piece evolved from Body Works, which is also here on Vimeo. Body Works had a series of monitors playing a static red image and contained Adrian playing keyboard, laptop, tapes etc. and Jimmy on piano accordion, mixing in vocal samples concerned with drug usage (specifically LSD) from people like Bill Hicks, Timothy Leary and Terrence McKenna.

Dimensions was built on some of the aesthetic and structural qualities of Body Works.

In Dimensions, the static image is no longer red, it is green, Jimmy is playing a subtly different chord that he extends over 14′, Adrian uses vocal samples from Buddhist chanting and adds the sounds of a glockenspiel to the mix, and (most importantly) there is the addition of Alex playing an instrument that Adrian had built, which is a slight modification of a Glenn Branca harmonic guitar.

Just like Advanced Standing (which is also on Vimeo), this work explores the connections between noise music and its meditative and transcendental qualities, this time linking it in with Buddhism.

Limited Edition DVD - Adrian Clement Performance 2008

My three major performances this year (Dimensions, Advanced Standing and Body Works) will be available on a limited edition (/50) hand-numbered, hand-made DVD, packaged together with artwork for AU$10, including postage.

There will only be about 5 copies of this DVD put aside for the website, so be quick before they’re all gone. Email me at adrianclement@me.com to order a copy.

This is some footage of the second formal performance I have done this year at the College of Fine Arts. The title of the work is Advanced Standing, named after a series of articles written by Greg Shewchuk in Arthur Magazine.

Advanced Standing:

Advanced Standing from Adrian Clement on Vimeo.

Here’s the description I wrote up for Vimeo:

Advanced Standing is a sound art piece by Adrian Clement performed at The College of Fine Arts in 2008. For this work, Adrian sampled (and manipulated) field recordings of skate-parks in Sydney’s inner-west in a performance that combines distorted keyboard drone and minimalist/Sub-Saharan-style glockenspiel playing. Also present in this work are video samples from Gus Van Sant’s 2007 film Paranoid Park. The point of this work was to reproduce the transcendental nature of skateboarding, which ties into the notion that noise music (especially Japanoise, which borders on the psychadelic) is a means for spiritual elevation or meditation. Greg Shewchuck wrote a series of excellent articles on this aspect of skateboarding, titled “Advanced Standing”, which appeared in Arthur Magazine. The title for this work is taken from Shewchuk’s articles.

My three major performances this year (Dimensions, Advanced Standing and Body Works) will be available on a limited edition (/50) hand-numbered, hand-made DVD, packaged together with artwork for AU$10, including postage. Please email me at adrianclement@me.com if you would like one.

Here is some video footage of one of the projects I have been working on recently, titled Body Works. The video goes for approximately 10′. You can download the video file at this location, which is playable on an iPod and other portable devices. This work is available on a DVD titled Adrian Clement: Performance 2008, which also includes Dimensions and Advanced Standing. Strictly limited, it is available for $10, plus postage. Please email me at adrianclement@me.com if you would like one.

And without further ado, here is the video footage for Body Works:

Body Works from Adrian Clement on Vimeo.

Here’s the description I gave for Body Works on Vimeo:

Body Works is a sound art project by Adrian Clement performed at the College of Fine Arts in 2008, which features Jimmy Wynen on piano accordion and was filmed by John Dinamarca.

With Body Works, Adrian aimed to draw a connection between two parts of the body; an internal one - the trachea and an external one - earholes. Whereas the connection between earholes and Body Works is pretty obvious (the work is a sound based one), Adrian interpreted trachea as a means of producing voice. Voice can then produce verbal and non-verbal means of communication. Inspired by early Steve Reich compositions, Adrian manipulated vocal samples of people discussing LSD (including Bill Hicks, Timothy Leary and Terrence McKenna) in a way that became rhythmic and transformed from being verbal into non-verbal communication.

Jimmy’s cloak is a reference or homage to the heavy metal community, in particular Sunn O)))’s theatricality. The use of a piano accordion also represents antiquity and is meant to contrast and combine with the texture of sound created by Adrian’s use of digital and analogue technology.

Over the last couple of months, I’ve been working on a sound project titled Dimensions, which saw its first performance today. I was planning on posting pictures, videos, audio and a few items which will be put up for sale in the newly reformed adrian-clement.com store, but unfortunately, I never managed to take photos, and I completely forgot to turn the video camera on during the performance. Nevertheless, it was a complete success, and it got a very favorable reception. I am in talks for giving a second performance of the project, most likely a public one, so I’ll keep you posted on how that eventuates. If it does (and I hope it will), I will be doing it in about four weeks or so. During this time I will be uploading decent photographs, better video footage than I would’ve been able to acquire today, audio, and everything else that I see fit.

For now, I hope the following artwork, which was designed for a series of five tapes and one CD (which are in a similar vein to Mixtape Volume 2) is enough to suffice you:

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Edit: Unfortunately I was unable to get any footage of this performance.