Collaborative works :
Blago Bung, Cold Mountain & Emily Harvey Foundation
- www.montagnefroide.org
- Mobile Album International
- Emily Harvey Foundation
- Image link here
The Dada [Manifesto at end of this article] force and spirit has been moved forward since 2006 at the Emily Harvey Foundation where the first, second and fourth Blago Bung evenings took place; the 3rd was held in Zurich at the original Cabaret Voltaire in September 2009.
Blago Bung is an explanatory device /
blurs all disciplines /
is a trans-generational mix /
is speed /
Blago Bung shines.
Participants have included: Michel Auder, John Armleder, Michel Collet, Gerard Colin Thiebaut, Adam Kahan, Patrice Lerochereuil, Nicola L, Larry Litt, Moira Tierney, Valentine Verhaeghe, Beatriz Albuquerque, Michel Bulteau, Jacques Halbert, Per Huttner, Jeffrey Perkins, Nicole Peyrafitte, Ivan Alechine, Taketo Shimada, Joao Simoes, Nicola Sornaga, John Giornio, Roland Wagner, Paul Dorn, Soren Berner, Nicolas Kerksieck, Bob Lens, Paul Wiegerinck, Swetlana Heger, M.K., Charlie Doria, George Quasha, Neboja Seric Shoba and Glory Hazel.
Blago Bang is a “Meta-ecriture” and every artist presents actions, dance or no-dance, art and no-art, performances, poetry, video, sound works. The pieces roll up quickly, come together randomly and collectively that gives a character, tonicity and joy. Free association is open, as in a dream weave or in the society imagined by Charles Fourier. The dynamic is present, irrepressible, linked to theoretical research, play, philosophy, politics, aesthetics, poetry and movement…
Michel Collet
The collaboration started in 2006 after a snowball effect of performances and interventions in France and America between Michel Collet, Valentine Verhaeghe and Patrice Lerochereuil with associated writers artists, non-artists and others. A naming occurred from which emerged the collective, activist-oriented node that we can call, Blago Bung. The name comes from two lines of the proto poetric-performance “KARAWANE” by Hugo Ball at the opening of the Cabaret Voltaire in 1916.
Michel Collet, a key initiator who operates the Cold Mountain and Mobile projects wrote:
Montagne Froide is a creative device in the related areas of choreography, text, voice, images, sound and the machine (...) While using well-known types of devices such as performance, exposition as well as publications, our creations try to travel unexplored areas, far from the center or even half-way through a performance. Each creation makes it possible to assemble unlike elements that cohere as a whole tending to put form and questions about form, multiple appearances and esthetic games as wall as depth of meaning into play. Every action in Montagne Froide is managed by a team that is re-de?ned according to the project. Each action is co-created. The logical base of our productions relies on the concepts of the complexity and a non-specialized conception of art close to intermedia as de?ned by Dick Higgins.
About choreographer-performer Valentine Verhaeghe’s adaptation of “Mind Opener” a work by Robert Filliou, Astrid Gagnard wrote in Mouvement, Mai 2007: What’s at stake ? Showing that today it is possible to work together and that the reasoning of the network developed by the concept generator, Robert Filliou is still applicable. This heritage has grown and is developed by each of the personalities working with choreographer Valentine Verhaeghe in the creation. Nine interpreters (dancers, poets, performers) are on stage, the tenth being video and sound. It is in fact a interactive system that is proposed by the artists brought together in Mind Opener. Therefore the broadcasting of the videos, that is generated by the presence and the relations between the dancers and the performers is random or predetermined. This version of the play using the technological means available in 2007 is faithful to the spirit of Filliou who wanted to create poetry with a computer. Far from the standardization of some shows, Mind Opener accepts the challenge of going beyond the definitions of dance and proposing the interpretation of this partition with the creators of different generations (...). The emotion comes from proximity with the spirit of Filliou in a artistic performance where dance, establishes a dynamic exchange with other parts. Between the lines can be read the story of a friendship : of Robert Filliou, of Daniel Spoerri and Emmett Williams; Spoerri who launched Filliou on the artistic chessboard and Williams who imagined that the soul of his friend Robert was reincarnated in an insect, as Julien Blaine says in his text narrating the last moments of the artist.
Patrice, Lerochereuil says: If I were to describe my work. I will call it: “A field of approximative discoveries." I try to approach and clarify what seems to me necessary and fundamental but pretty much useless in our society's value system today. I realized early on that the idea of capturing a meaning or the effect of a thought is impossible. This make the origin of each piece very subjective. I always relied on my own sensibility and what I consider important. I have always prioritized thoughts/feelings, serendipity, over words formulations and, as an artist, concerned with process, origination over the final product. This dialectic simply implies the conflicts inherent in our efforts to communicate what is essential to us. For me it's a matter of balance, as well as sways, back and forth and adjustment.
I do not choose a medium over another. I simply live with the fear of missing some possibilities by not experimenting with other media, (performances, paintings, video, music, drawings...). For example, my piece "partir c'est crever un pneu" (a French pun meaning "leaving is a little bit like dying" refers to a quote of Alphonse Allais, and "leaving is having a flat tire" --- -where I stand before an audience and blow into a tube (A replica of Marcel Duchamp’s wheel 1913 ready-made) would not have had the impact I was looking for, had I not chosen to realize it as a performance. This hedonistic state beloved by Marcel Duchamp, a state where I find myself engaged in an action which implies exhibitionism and public voyeurism, and of course my attachment to Duchamp's work, were the genesis of the piece. (Not to say that I was born in the same part of France as Marcel Duchamp. Normandy).
See these links for the next chances to work with the Blago Bung phenomenon:
Cold Mountain http://www.montagnefroide.org/
Mobile http://www.montagnefroide.org/index.php?/mobile--album/01--in-between
Emily Harvey Foundation http://www.emilyharveyfoundation.org
_+* L. Brandon Krall
Hugo Ball: Dada Manifesto, reprinted below.
This was read to the public at the first Dada soiree,
Zurich, July 14, 1916.
Dada is a new tendency in art. One can tell this from the fact that until now nobody knew anything about it, and tomorrow everyone in Zurich will be talking about it. Dada comes from the dictionary. It is terribly simple. In French it means "hobby horse". In German it means "good-bye", "Get off my back", "Be seeing you sometime". In Romanian: "Yes, indeed, you are right, that's it. But of course, yes, definitely, right". And so forth.
An International word. Just a word, and the word a movement. Very easy to understand. Quite terribly simple. To make of it an artistic tendency must mean that one is anticipating complications. Dada psychology, dada Germany cum indigestion and fog paroxysm, dada literature, dada bourgeoisie, and yourselves, honoured poets, who are always writing with words but never writing the word itself, who are always writing around the actual point. Dada world war without end, dada revolution without beginning, dada, you friends and also-poets, esteemed sirs, manufacturers, and evangelists. Dada Tzara, dada Huelsenbeck, dada m'dada, dada m'dada dada mhm, dada dera dada, dada Hue, dada Tza.
How does one achieve eternal bliss? By saying dada. How does one become famous? By saying dada. With a noble gesture and delicate propriety. Till one goes crazy. Till one loses consciousness. How can one get rid of everything that smacks of journalism, worms, everything nice and right, blinkered, moralistic, europeanised, enervated? By saying dada. Dada is the world soul, dada is the pawnshop. Dada is the world's best lily-milk soap. Dada Mr Rubiner, dada Mr Korrodi. Dada Mr Anastasius Lilienstein. In plain language: the hospitality of the Swiss is something to be profoundly appreciated. And in questions of aesthetics the key is quality.
I shall be reading poems that are meant to dispense with conventional language, no less, and to have done with it. Dada Johann Fuchsgang Goethe. Dada Stendhal. Dada Dalai Lama, Buddha, Bible, and Nietzsche. Dada m'dada. Dada mhm dada da. It's a question of connections, and of loosening them up a bit to start with. I don't want words that other people have invented. All the words are other people's inventions. I want my own stuff, my own rhythm, and vowels and consonants too, matching the rhythm and all my own. If this pulsation is seven yards long, I want words for it that are seven yards long. Mr Schulz's words are only two and a half centimetres long.
It will serve to show how articulated language comes into being. I let the vowels fool around. I let the vowels quite simply occur, as a cat meows . . . Words emerge, shoulders of words, legs, arms, hands of words. Au, oi, uh. One shouldn't let too many words out. A line of poetry is a chance to get rid of all the filth that clings to this accursed language, as if put there by stockbrokers' hands, hands worn smooth by coins. I want the word where it ends and begins. Dada is the heart of words.
Each thing has its word, but the word has become a thing by itself. Why shouldn't I find it? Why can't a tree be called Pluplusch, and Pluplubasch when it has been raining? The word, the word, the word outside your domain, your stuffiness, this laughable impotence, your stupendous smugness, outside all the parrotry of your self-evident limitedness. The word, gentlemen, is a public concern of the first importance.