4CD – True Blanking

These four CDs are the result of three years of collaborative work between video artist Kjell Bjørgeengen and drummer Chris Cogburn. The duo decided to explore the differences between the resonance frequencies and harmonics of material objects, and the accuracy of sinusoidal waveforms. In live sets, the project is enriched with additional audio signals which are transformed into videos and then remodulated into new audio signals through a process of data sonification. It’s an obsessive cycle often leaning into industrial and dystopian spaces. In this work, repetition has nothing to do with repetition of the same because, to paraphrase Deleuze, repetition is not similarity, if the individuality of the object consists in everything that defines it, there can be no confusion, it is precisely that and nothing else. The sounds generated in this exploration are accompanied by the drums of Ingar Zach, the cellos of Aimée Theriot-Ramos and Judith Hamann, and the double bass of Juan García, almost as if to remind us that music still has its own field of action, as the resonances of the physical objects are related to the architectural spaces where the performance takes place: a contemporary chamber music form in which the notion of artistic subjectivity is compared with objective conditions in an investigation of a mediated reality, produced in an unusual way even for those who are knowledgeable of improvisation or contemporary classical fields. Each of the four CDs was recorded in a different city (Madrid, Coyoacán, Oslo and Mexico City), and include rehearsals and other interactions the musicians involved in the project had during the project’s development. Their work was mixed and edited by another well-known musician from this field, Giuseppe Lelasi. For the preparation of these musical events, the physical conditions imposed by the data and the space had priority over everything else – the ensemble’s interventions only coming after experiencing the overall context of the work, in a type of neutrality expressiveness that cancels out the individual musicians and suffocating any interpretative yearning. The four CDs are presented individually in an elegant box with a 6-panel double-sided accordion folded print accompanied by images taken from a live performance in Austin.

 

Kjell Bjørgeengen and Chris Cogburn – Fear of the Object