Sunday 24 October 2010
TAG/Les Ateliers Claus
Passage Rogier, 1210 Brussels
15.30h, 5 euro
Rod Summers, born in England, 1943 and based in Holland since the 70’s features among the ‘second wave’ of intermedia artists (first wave including Dick Higgins, John Cage, Allan Kaprow, Joseph Beuys and the Fluxus artists of the 1960’s). Summers is active as sound, visual, conceptual artist, performance poet, dramatist, mail artist and book artist, publisher, archivist, and lecturer on intermedia and differs from the members of the first generation in that he is less theoretical and more experiential in his approach to his art. In the early 60’s he began to experiment with recorded sound and by 1973 he became an active participant in the Mail art network getting in contact with like-minded artists as Vittore Baroni and Guy Bleus. Humour or absurdism is an essential part in Summers’ performances where change of voice, sound effects and unlikely twists of plot belong to his mode of operation.
The results of his multiple, art-related activities have often appeared as part of his concept of VEC (Visual, Experimental, Concrete), which he originated in 1973. He created a large body of sound work which he has been releasing himself in limited editions. In 1999 CNN International featured Summers in its Art Club show as a representative of avant-garde art in Holland. In addition, over the last 20 years, Summers has performed his work at various festivals in Europe and Iceland, including the Reykjavik Art Festival (1991), the Polypoetry Festival of Sound Poetry (Bologna, 1993), and the International Sound Poetry Festival (Bologna, 1997), among others.
Ditterich von Euler-Donnersperg (Sachwalter des Werkbundes), pseudonym of Uli Rehberg, is an intermedia artist from Hamburg, active as musician, writer, film director, and controversial politician, as Dr. Kurt Euler, chairman of the (fictive) neo-communist party KED.
In 1980, in the heat of punk and industrial music, Rehberg started the underground recordshop Unterm Durchschnitt, he organised numerous concerts in the genre and consequently he founded the label Walter Ulbricht Schallfolien where he released albums by Throbbing Gristle, SPK, Laibach, Hafler Trio and the illustrious project Werkbund of which he is the administrator. Since the mid 90’s Euler-Donnersperg also does live performances consisting of socio-critical poetry rhyme seen through the eyes of the animal kingdom, accompanied with abstract sound. These poetry works he also publishes on small vinyl picturedisks in beautiful handmade portfolios. For his performance on oktober 24 he will surprise us with similar soundpoetry and some self directed short films will be shown too. Throughout the years Donnersperg worked regularly with a.o. Asmus Tietchens and Felix Kubin, two like minded artists from the mysterious Hamburg scene. He is currently directing a feature film ‘Sieg der Vernunft’.
A Metaphon co-production with Les Ateliers Claus, bringing together their forces to organise a series of unusual and exclusive contemporary music events on a sunday afternoon: ‘Musiques Insolites’ #2
