Imaginalia Revisited
(2018-2019) Østfold Kunstsenter, Ina/GRM, Lydgalleriet
SPECTRES
Composer l’écoute / Composing listening
WITH TEXTS BY / AVEC DES TEXTES DE
Félicia Atkinson, François Bayle, François J. Bonnet, Drew Daniel, Brunhild Ferrari, Beatriz Ferreyra, Stephen O’Malley, Jim O’Rourke, Eliane Radigue, Régis Renouard Larivière, Espen Sommer Eide, Daniel Teruggi, Chris Watson
This book has been conceived as both a prism and a manual. Following the “traditional” arc of electroacoustic composition (listen—record—compose—deploy—feel), each of the contributions collected together here focuses in on a personal aspect, a fragment of that thrilling territory that is sonic and musical experimentation.
Although the term “experimental music” may now have be understood as referring to a genre, or even a particular style, we ought to hold on to the original use of this term, which was based more on an approach than on any particular aesthetic line to be followed. The experimental is first and foremost a spirit, the spirit of the exploration of unknown territories, a spirit of invention which sees musical composition more as a voyage into uncertain territories than as a self-assured approach working safe within the bosom of fully mapped out and recognized lands.
«I see the work Imaginalia as a story about the landscape where the artist grew up. A landscape in movement and change throughout the seasons. The same wind, the same seasons, the same sounds, well known but unreachable at the same time.
To return to a landscape after so many years… the senses are the same – but the meaning changes because we ourselves have changed.
A landscape you feel in the bones – but still is but a memory. Watching the film I get a pang of anxiety when I see the intensely yellow birches’ leaf; It is beautiful, but still it tells me of my loneliness and alienness in this world. I have always been curious about other beings’ experience of our common wood.
The yellow birches’ leaf is beautiful… and yet it is a moment of anxiety. The leaf represents something safe and homely we have grown up with – it is at the same time so foreign that it slaps us in the face and our soul freeze up.»
Asle Nilsen, Verdensteatret