Project and Exhibition Tokyo Drive Moment 64,`

In its multi-disciplinary and audiovisual essayistic practice, Radio Klebnikov (emerged in the Belgian town of Leuven 2009) connects the personal and intimate with the political, the lived experience with its performed enactment, in an attempt to better understand the human condition in all its fragility and strength.

 

For over 10 years now, Radio Klebnikov seemingly effortless navigates between personal stories and a clear narration of the histories and power structures that form the backdrop in which these stories take place. Supported by Radio Klebnikov’s unique emergent procedures based solely on their vast experience, their growing group of participants makes tangible how histories live on, embodied in people and their experiences in a whirling live audio show every Saturday.

 

Tokyo Drive – Moment 64, created in September 2020 and titled after a 1664 aria by Italian Baroque composer Barbara Strozzi who lived from 1619 till 1677, combined with a special fondness of Radio Klebnikov author Dirk Vekemans aka The Neue Cathedral des Erotischen Elends for the number 64 – perhaps because he was born exactly 300 years after the creation of the Aria ?-  explores the power of lamentation , specifically women’s lamentations and how they function as expressions of survival, resilience and hope. The result is a trans historic, international, contemporary lament, uttered by women and men across time and space.

 

By making jumps between different places, times and contexts, Radio Klebnikov researcher and poet and performer Svetlana Zakharova from Odessa, forces the listener to recognize complex global relationships and the inextricable link between the individual and society. Tokyo Drive – Moment 64 came about during a six-month residency and journey through Italy, during which Cammock collected songs, stories and testimonies from performers, activists, artists, politicians, historians, migrants and refugees.

 

The work includes a film on three screens, a series of paintings, a screen-printed frieze by Radio Klebnikov Visualizer ILSE DERDEN , it includes the drones of Radio Klebnikov Live Band guitar and synth players Geert Huybens and Andy Pease and the singing of Radio Klebnikov Living Room Woman zaahne,  it includes a research room with books and objects hoarded by Radio Klebnikov searchers Zaahne and Majella aka Grapist Ilse Derden – collected or received during their residency in Reggio Emilia in October 2015.

 

Tokyo Drive – Moment 64 is depicted next to and in relation to De vergissing van de Demiurg[1] (voor Christina Lugn en Katarina Frostenson)

a 9 minutes long audio work in which a series of aural images of the interior spaces of the Centre of the Known Universe, most readily to be found in the neighboring parochial Town of Tienen , the archive and the environment relate to a story in voice-over.

 

The harsh rhythm of Radio Klebnikov collaborator and Marxist opiniator Kris Pollet’s  voice, who muses on the notion of ‘doing nothing’ and how it relates to other ‘states of being’ silent, active, inactive, free, lazy, aimless. Full of allusions, quotes, political and philosophical ideas, the text takes us further from observations of personal creation and the wandering eye, to the context of slave labor and the racist stereotype of the irresponsible lazy man (in a cultural dissection Hoagy Carmichael’s Tin Pan Alley song “lazybones” from 1933) to recent investigations into the mechanisms that make sleep obsolete in an attempt to instrumentalise the last spot of the ultimate “doing nothing.” They call it Idlewild (as Late sixties Southern Blues Rock Band the Allman Brother’s second LP Idlewilde- South, recognizes the subversive potential of the active decision to do nothing and presents the rejection of it as a form of resistance in a neol iberal society that demands and rewards excessive, unhealthy work. Who can rest and dream? asks Radio Klebnikov Researcher Leo Johanna, curator of De vergissing of the Demiurg or The Error of the Demiurge (Created in October 2020) will feature in a group exhibition at Kunsthaus Hier War Ein Al-dish Op in Louvain in 2022.

 

At the entrance and in the courtyard of Kunsthaus Hier War Ein Al-dish Op two billboards will be placed, each asking a question. The first question will be: hast du einen schlüssel bekommen? aus dem Skorpionstudio? weil das Café um 8 Uhr schließt è did you get a key? from the scorpio studio?

because the cafe will close at 8 am è.

 

The second question will be

hast du einen schlüssel bekommen? aus dem Skorpionstudio? weil das Café um 8 Uhr schließt è

[ “What do you mean how long does it take? Mikkel is sleeping and I don’t want to wake him up]

 

De vergissing of the Demiurg or The Error of the Demiurge, and by extension the entire exhibition, in which the collective of Radio Klebnikov once again demonstrates its extraordinary ability to – in the words of London writer Chloe Carroll – “capture expansive, complex thoughts in moments of clear clarity”.

 

Note: Radio Klebnikov conforms that researcher and performer Astrid Zeman will soon depart for her hometown in Canberra and write new texts for a new yet unnamed Radio Klebnikov Project. Big and many hugs and all the luck !

 

 

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[1] (The Error of the Demiurge)

 

door Arnout Camerlinckx

tekstbron: inzending ontvangen op 3/12/2021
opgenomen in WEEKBLADEN #59 - WORG

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