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February 24, 2019 at 7 PM
MATTIN
Manipulation Studies #2
Manipulation Studies is a series by Mattin of exercises in social relations.
These exercises take improvisation as a starting point, as a way to explore ‘social dissonance’; a form of cognitive dissonance at the collective level, where our beliefs are contradicted by our actions. (The impossibility of stopping climate change would be an extreme example of this). This ‘social dissonance’ can produce a confusing and fragmented reality. Increasingly we try to deal with this confusion individually, however, this only reproduces it further since it is a collective question.
Mattin is an artist from Bilbao - living in Berlin- working with noise and improvisation. His work seeks to address the social and economic structures of experimental sonic artistic production through live performance, recordings and writing. Using a conceptual approach, he aims to question the nature and parameters of improvisation, specifically the relationship between the idea of ''freedom'' and constant innovation that it traditionally implies, and the established conventions of improvisation as a genre. Mattin considers improvisation not only as an interaction between performers and instruments, but as a situation involving all the elements that constitute a concert situation, including the audience and the social and architectural space. He tries to expose the stereotypical relation between active performer and passive audience, producing a sense of strangeness and alienation that disturbs this relationship. He has completed a PhD at the University of the Basque Country under the supervision of Ray Brassier and Josu Rekalde. Along with Anthony Iles they edited the book Noise & Capitalism in 2009. In 2012 CAC Brétigny and Tuamaturgia published Uconsitituted Praxis, a book collecting his writing plus interviews and reviews from performances that he has been part of. Both books are available online. Mattin took part in documenta14 in Athens and Kassel in 2017.
www.mattin.org
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