UnStumm

UnStumm is a project for improvised film and music (Echtzeitfilm) for cross-disciplinary and crosscultural collaboration between filmmakers, video artists and musicians from Germany and other countries. The project is organized and curated by video artist Claudia Schmitz and guitarist/soundartist Nicola L. Hein. It aims to create an environment of cultural and creative exchange, where a common complex artistic language is invented and used to communicate narratives, textures, colliding, combining, attracting worlds of sight and sound. The group of eight artists will work together in two different groups for three days to create an audiovisual performance that explores multidisciplinary improvisation as well as structure and narrative. The resulting artworks reflect on the themes of interculturality, cultural identity, cross cultural communication, the history of artistic thought (in different cultures) and many other philosophical topoi. The concert encompasses two Echtzeit-movies, which are improvised by a group alongside a conceptual composition that has been worked out during the rehearsals. Every group presents a piece that is in between 40-50 minutes long.

Live:
Axel Dörner
Luis Negrón van Grieken
Claudia Schmitz
Nicola L. Hein
Toshimaru Nakamura
Tetsuzi Akiyama
Akiko Nakayama
Harata Atsushi

Artist information:

Axel Dörner

trumpet, electronics, composition; Born in Cologne,1964. Studied piano and trumpet (with Malte Burba) at the Musikhochschule, Cologne. Lives in Berlin since 1994. He has worked together with numerous internationally respected figures in the fields of “Improvised Music”, “Composed Contemporary Music”, “Jazz” and “Electronic Music”. He has developed a unique style of trumpet playing based in part on unusual, often self-invented techniques. He has toured in Europe, America, Australia, Asia and Africa and appeared on numerous CD and record releases.

Luis Negrón van Grieken

His works deals with the interference between science, art and technology by operating with translation and transmission in narration, phenomena of reality and observation using video, photography, sound and programming, live cinema and computer-based installation. Postgraduate Studies in Academy of Media Arts Cologne. Master in Design of Interactive Systems at Media Art Centre d’Art i Disseny and University Of Barcelona. Guest-Student at the Bauhaus University Weimar. M.Sc. in Media-Engineering and Media-Studies at the Technical University Ilmenau. Actually he is Assistant Professor at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne.

Claudia Schmitz

lives in Berlin and gratuated from the KHM Köln – Academy of Media Arts Cologne. Claudia Schmitz uses pneumatic sculpture, multidimensional drawing and video to create new imaginary dimensions, to explore new forms of space. By passing through temporary stages, by discarding and re-inventing themselves, the pieces explore oscillating stages of being and non-being, of existence inside and outside the image. Triggered into action by the spectators, many of her pieces discuss the extent and possibilities of participation. Claudia Schmitz is an internationally active artist and her work is present in international public and private collections. Recently, she exhibited in New York City, Budapest, HongKong, and Singapore. In 2017 she was artist in residence at the prestigious MMCA Residency Goyang, Southkorea (federal state grant, Foundation Rhineland-Palatinate for Culture, Künstlerhaus Schloss Balmoral).
cces-claudiaschmitz.de

Nicola L. Hein

As a guitarist he is mainly concerned about the search for new sounds on his instrument . As a composer he finds different ways of integrating philosophical ideas into music and to play music from a philosophical point of view. As a soundartist he is developing different performative and installative sculptural settings, which project the musical ontology of Improvised Music onto different aestheticrealms and bring them into dialogue with questions from philosophy. As a philosopher he is interested in philosophy of music, epistemology, aesthetics and media theory and the application of theory to artistic practise. He studied Jazzguitar, Soundart / Composition, Philosophy and German philology at the Friedrich-Wilhelms Universität Bonn and the Gutenberg-Universität Mainz. Currently Visiting Scholar at Columbia University, New York City. He received numerous stipends, project grants, residencies and awards. Concerts led him to many different countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and America. He has worked with: Evan Parker, Phil Minton, John Russell, Paul Lytton, Nate Wooley, Miya Masaoka, Rudi Mahall, Tobias Delius, John Butcher, Burkhard Beins etc.

Toshimaru Nakamura

Toshimaru Nakamura’s instrument is the no-input mixing board, which describes a way of using a standard mixing board as an electronic music instrument, producing sound without any external audio input. The use of the mixing board in this manner is not only innovative in the the sounds it can create but, more importantly, in the approach this method of working with the mixer demands. The unpredictability of the instrument requires an attitude of obedience and resignation to the system and the sounds it produces, bringing a high level of indeterminacy and surprise to the music. Nakamura pioneered this approach to the use of the mixing board in the mid-1990’s and has since then appeared on over one hundred audio publications, including nine solo CD’s. He has performed throughout Europe, North America, Argentina, New Zealand, Australia, Korea, China, Singapore and Malaysia, performing and recording both as a soloist and in collaboration with numerous other musicians. As an active organizer of concerts in Tokyo, Nakamura has helped many musicians coming to Japan find places to perform, both with himself and with others. From 1998 to 2003 Nakamura and Tetuzi Akiyama ran the concert series Improvisation Series at Bar Aoyama and then later the Meeting at Off Site series of concerts. Both these concert series were crucially important in exposing a new manner to improvised music (referred to as Electro Acoustic Improvisation) to the Japanese public and to foreign musicians visiting Japan, making Tokyo one of the global hotspots for this new approach to music.

Tetsuzi Akiyama

Akiyama specializes in creating music with elements of both primitivism and realism by connecting his own aspirations, in a minimal and straightforward way, to the special instrumental qualities of the guitar. Sometimes delicately and sometimes boldly, he controls sound volumes ranging from micro to macro, in an attempt to convert the body into an electronic entity.

Akiko Nakayama

Visual artist Akiko Nakayama creates installations, live performance and photographic works dealing with energy cycles, movement and colors. Employing a wide range of techniques, her unique approach to live painting results in melting landscapes, kaleidoscopic patterns and surreal and saturated vistas. Working in collaboration with some of Japan’s most distinctive improvising artists, including Keiji Haino, Akira Sakata and Hiromichi Sakamoto, she pursues what she titles ‘alive painting’, in which she aims to find the ‘existence of life’ in the act of creating out of nothingness.
akiko.co.jp

Atsushi Harata

Atsushi Harata is an analog video expressionist. He uses the OHP (Over Head Projector) to mix liquid collage, essentially creating a “Light Painting” in real time. He has shared his unique vision at music festivals, art and design festivals, galleries, and as stage art for live productions.
aohpalight.tumblr.com