clinamen

Céleste Boursier-Mougenot is a French artist who started out as an avant-garde composer before he turned to making long-duration large-scale acoustic installations like he’s been doing for the last two years. His most well known work might be From hear to ear, in which birds fly around the exhibition space, and plugged-in guitars serve as perches for the birds. A lot of his work showcases chance and indeterminacy in highly controlled environments.

With clinamen, one can see this fascination for chance in composition, as well as his interest in creating musical sounds with objects which are not primarily meant for that task (the porcelain ceramics).

Undercurrent in the water makes the porcelain float across, the clinking of the ceramics makes for a composition with aleatory form.

clinamen is currently on display at the Centre Pompidou-Metz in France until the end of September.

She Loves You Yéyé in Journal de Nîmes N°4

Although I do write quite a lot on the web, it is wonderful to see some of my words actually printed on paper. In November last year I wrote an article about Japanese music in Journal de Nîmes, the quarterly paper of denim inspired boutique Tenue de Nîmes in Amsterdam. For the newest, France-themed edition I again wrote the music section, and this time it is called She Loves You Yéye, after the Yéyé movement in French music. You can click on the image above to read the article.

I did not intent to write a complete overview of French music, as that would be a book full of content. Rather, I chose a few French artists which inspire me in some way or another. Next to my contribution this issue holds a Paris city report, a little history of the shirt, The Faces of Neal Cassady by Piet Heijden Hume and much, much more.