Frantz Loriot // viola
Christian Wolfarth // percussion
Jason Kahn // electronics
Recorded in concert on October 21, 2022
at Plattform nicht dokumentierbarer Ereignisse
in Atelier Dürrenfeld/Geitel, Köln, Germany.
Recording, mastering, cover design Jason Kahn.
Editions 013
Zürich
The question that is often asked to me after I announce I am a violist, is if I play in a symphonic orchestra to make my living.
I always end up answering that I actually do not play classical music anymore, since a long time and thus, do not play in such orchestras either. So, the inevitable question of «what kind of music do you do, then?» is always asked.
To put it in some «genre boxes», I tell I play improvised music or so-called experimental music. That being said, I don’t think it tells anything specific about a style or an aesthetic of music.
What do I mean by improvised music?
In improvised music, one usually does not know what is going to happen and we (the people performing that way) usually do not decide in advance what is going to happen. Sometimes, one does not know the people s·he is playing with; each one has his/her own mood of the day; feels the room in different ways. Players can come from radically different aesthetics and cultural backgrounds. But in principle, everybody is free – so to say, to play whatever, whenever s·he wants.
If you’re playing with some people for the first time (meeting on stage) or if you’re performing with people you know since long, whom you have played along with, or if you would know their works, these conditions could of course influence what would happen. Sometimes, you could almost guess what is going to happen and sometime, it doesn’t happen at all as you expected and it will completely put your expectations upside down.
We cannot tell how or what kind of music it will sound like.
Personally, what I am interested in is to get rid of some parameters which define and identify «music» – such as melodic, harmonic and rhythmic parameters. My works mainly focus on timbre, duration (or time – which could be connected and consider as rhythm) and dynamics. Focusing on all these different parameters obviously affect somehow the aesthetic of the improvisation and blur the foundations of our assimilated perceptions and knowledge of what we call music. Thus, when one improvises music, the style cannot be defined nor frozen.
Nevertheless, the British guitar player Derek Bailey called it «non-idiomatic» music.
This term, in a sense, taken as a stylistic definition or a result, could be problematic, since in a way it redefines some frames. I personally understand this term as a process, and I like the analogy we could make with the notion of anarchy. Often, when one hears the term «anarchy», s·he would quickly associate it with the idea chaos - chaos in the sense that people would not relate, would be in individualistic state of mind, there would be no rules, etc.
I like to look at the notion of anarchy as a process to regenerate different ways of interacting, relating to each other and to reshuffle the cards. The notion of anarchy questions our relations to hierarchy/equality, domination, and freedom. These words and concepts are a bit «swearword» which are so heavily connotated, but both the practice of musical improvisation (as an artistic and social practice) and anarchy/ism (as a practice and political and social movement) deal with these notions.
As an improvisor, I do not consider myself above any other players or audience. I do not try to dominate neither the situation nor the other players. I am supposed to be free to take my own decision, during the moment of the performance, as much as all the other performers who are taking part to it. This doesn’t mean I am closed to what is happening around me, on the contrary. I’ll be listening as much as I can, feel the others as deep as possible, try to interact with the whole situation, but without necessarily be in a situation of consensus and follow. I’ll be able to state what I have to say – it might be completely contrasting and distanced with the rest, but it will be, nevertheless, in relation with what is going on. This could also be a certain way to interpret anarchism. It is a way to relate without being dominated.
As for the notion of freedom, I find it difficult because I believe in determinism. So, freedom of decisions, but somehow, in the frame of determinism.
Anarchy/ism carries this very strong political connotation, and I ask myself if the practice of musical improvisation could be some kind of political statement? Or if this musical practice and politics should be separated?
What is important to state here is that anarchy, as a process differs to anarchism which is (are) a defined project(s). If I look at anarchism as ideologies, what I see is some frames. Frames that are definitely different and in opposition to capitalist ideologies, but frames nevertheless. As French philosopher Frédéric Lordon would say, they also constructed their own banners and institutions. Anarchy, more than an ideology, express a process. It is about questioning, pushing and overflow the boundaries that we constantly build ourselves every time further. Every time I improvise, I challenge myself, I put myself in a different situation and the result will be affected by it. In a way, it is a practice which forces you to push yourself constantly out of the boxes of your expectations and to bring you in unpredicted zones.
Of course, it is not because you’re playing improvised music that this action will change or affect any kind of political situation or decision. But what is fundamental is to share/show and actively do and set up a process which reshuffles settled frames. The meaning of the practice of musical improvisation is in the process. The result counts, of course but I do not believe it is its goal. I think you can enjoy an improvised music performance only when it is happening live, because this is the moment you can actually witness and be part of an action – being active, which is unique in that specific moment because it gathers all the elements (the place and its geography, its history, the people who are present, the performers etc.) which are present in that very right moment. It is an inclusive practice. What I try to do as an improvisor, is to experience every time new feelings, new forms, new situations. I’m trying to inject some non-idiomatic/anarchy in my own practice, into my own expectations, to constantly stumble, be in movement, and not stay frozen at a certain state where frames will start forming and freezing themselves.
The process, as much as perspectives, are constantly evolving and I like to refer to poet and philosopher Édouard Glissant who brought the notion of creolity. He wrote «Creolization is not this shapeless (uniform) mixture where each one would go to lose himself, but a series of astonishing resolutions, whose fluid maxim would be said thus: ‘I change, by exchanging with the other, without losing myself however nor denaturing myself.’ We must grant it, offer it always.» Or also «Creolization is the bringing together of several cultures or at least several elements of distinct cultures, in one place of the world, with the result of a new feature, totally unpredictable compared to the sum or simple synthesis of these elements.»
I personally feel, my artistic practice but also my life practice so to say, is related to Glissant’s thoughts. The way we process our lives (relate, exchange, change), and our artistic practice would be political in the sense that, by moving and changing, they would question and resist any institutionalised and globalised norms, formats and schemes of doing and thinking. Fitting in would be freezing ourselves to a state. Misfitting is a form of resistance.
