During our Festival we will have a very special Muslimgauze DJ-Project. We aim to collectively pay tribute to the great influential music project Muslimgauze created by British musician Bryn Jones (June 17, 1961 – January 14, 1999). A broad spectrum of DJ’s will play a 1-hour set with music of Muslimgauze as well as music which they think is inspired by his work. With these different sets we get a variety of interpretations on the vast body of work created by Bryn Jones.

Participants and Timetable:

Friday 12 January:

19:00 – Bob Rusche (X-Rated – Concertzender Nederland)

20:00 – Guy Pinhas (Southern Lord Europe)

21:00 – DJ Liquid Soundclash

22:00 – Kevin Svartvit (the тide øf тhe εnd )

Saturday 13 January:

18:00 – DJ Empty Venue (Gonzo (circus)

19:00 – Pharoah Chromium

20:00 – Sascha Roth (Pantropical)

21:00 – Koen en Tess (Ex-Incubate)

22:00 – Sjoerd Stolk (OCCII Amsterdam/Occii Stu)

The music of Muslimgauze has played a pioneering role in the development of electronic music. By bringing together styles as diverse as industrial, ritual ambient, dance and techno as well as combining previously unheard sampling techniques, the use of ethnic sounds and unique electronic repititions the music of Muslimgauze stands out through time.

Bryn Jones recorded so much material that new releases are still published to this day. His unique blends of electronic music with controversial Islamic, Middle-Eastern and North-African influences make Muslimgauze an indispensable subject during Spider, Spit and Broken Bells.

On Saturday 13 January between 13:00 – 16:35 at WORM Rotterdam you can join the Academy of the Sacred, where we will explore the theoretical and social implications of our project with lectures and talks.

Spider, Spit and Broken Bells -PART 2- Haperende Mens Festival started as an attempt to create a dialogue between experimental music and media art/theory cultures. The Festival’s very aim became to create a multidisciplinary event to explore from different perspectives traces of the relevance of Bataille’s notion of the Sacred as a form of community formation in the context of an ever-increasing technologically mediated culture.

Following is a brief introduction to our theoretical starting points – our own, so to say, traces of the Sacred – as well as a list of speakers and lectures.

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“Men, assembling for a sacrifice and for a festival, satisfy their need to expend a vital excess. The sacrificial laceration that opens a festival is a liberating laceration. The individual who participates in loss is obscurely aware that this loss engenders the community that supports him.”

– George Bataille, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927-1939, p.251

George Bataille’s own criticism of technology is ruthless. In a divided world (world of things vs living beings) men is not only responsible for this split, but also finds itself on the wrong side of the divide. The Symposium takes this challenge as its very starting point, asking: could the form of ‘loss’ at the basis of the ‘sacred community’ come to resist the determinism of a technologically mediated culture? Through an eclectic selection of theoretical investigations from the most disparate of backgrounds, the Symposium proposes a research into aesthetical experiences and social bonds that are not subject to recuperation, accumulation or production, but able to question both the normative humanist subject and the very expenditures of capital which he co-creates.

List of lectures and speakers:

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Nathalie Houtermans (NL)

https://nathaliehoutermans.com/

“Spider, Spit and Broken Bells: introduction”

A research advisor for Haperende Mens, Houtermans is an experienced curator and art & culture theorist, with a special interest in Bataille’s work and its (possible) influence on contemporary art and society. Also a passionate musician, Nathalie is a vocalist and songwriter, developing collaborative projects with music varying from punk blues and noise to lo-fi experimental techno. Currently she is Research Tutor at the Willem de Kooning Academie in Rotterdam.

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Jan Robert Leegte (NL)

http://www.leegte.org/

“On Eva & Franco Mattes”

Jan Robert Leegte lives and works in Amsterdam. He is among the first artists who were involved in the 90s NetArt movement. A recurring theme in his work is the sculptural materiality of interfaces of computer programs. Recent exhibitions include, amongst others, ‘Electronic Superhighway’ at Whitechapel Gallery in London, and ‘Open Codes’ at ZKM Karlsruhe.

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Nicola Masciandaro (US)

http://thewhim.blogspot.nl/

“Inner life / inner death: On The Sonic Threshold of The Sacred”

Masciandaro (professor at CUNY Brooklyn College, NYC, US) is a writer and theorist in the spheres of medieval literature and mysticism. Some principal themes of his work are: individuation, sorrow, decapitation, commentary, metal, alpinism, love, anagogy, and paradise. His essays have appeared in a variety of journals (Qui Parle, Cyclops, Collapse et al.) and his recent books include ‘Floating Tomb: Black Metal Theory’ (Mimesis, 2015) and ‘SACER’ (Schism, 2017). In 2018, Mimesis will publish his current project, ‘On the Darkness of the Will’.

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DDV (BE)

http://www.clubmoral.com/ddv/

The usefulness of Lectures on Saturday 13

Since 1979: one hundred and seventy-two performances in forty-six cities in twelve countries; twenty-eight exhibitions in thirteen cities in seven countries; one hundred and twenty-two group exhibitions in thirty cities in nine countries; two hundred sixty-two articles in seventy-four magazines and newspapers; sixty-six catalogues by forty-seven publishers; one hundred and eleven videos on youtube.com; sixteen dj-sets on

podomatic.com; two thousand nine hundred and eleven posts on wheniwasbuyingyouadrinkwherewereyou.blogspot.com; six hundred and forty-seven posts on theyeshavit.blogspot.com; two hundred and forty-six posts on theartistsbookshelf.blogspot.com; two hundred and eleven posts on onkawaraisnotdead.blogspot.com; sixty-five posts on bastardartgruppe.blogspot.com;

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Menno Grootveld (NL) [moderator]

Grootveld started doing pirate television in Amsterdam with PKP TV and Rabotnik TV in the early eighties. In the mid-80s he contributed in organizing major media-conferences, such as the European Media Festival in 1985, followed by the Wetware Convention (1991). Menno currently works as a translator and a journalist, and runs his own publishing house in Amsterdam.

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ARTISTS TALKS

Saturday 13 January – 17:00 WORM – UBIK

Free Entrance

Participants t.b.a.

Moderators: Andrea di Serego Alighieri, Bence Meijer

During Spider, Spit and Broken Bells there will be an extensive film programme.Amongst the titles, we are very proud to present a Dutch premiere of the documentary Bight of the Twin, starring Genesis BREYER P-ORRIDGE and investigating Voudoun rites against the backdrop of Western secular art and performance. Together with screenings of the award nominated feature film Busters Mal Heart, Imagine Film Festival artistic director Chris Oosterom will present the mesmerizing art-film Leviathan by Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor and an exciting selection of shorts.

Below you can find the selection of the films, their description and time of screening:

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Leviathan (2012)

by Véréna Paravel
and Lucien Castaing-Taylor

Wednesday 10 January, 20:00

Friday 12 January 20:30

Paravel and Castaing-Taylor create meditative, trance-like “non-narrative epics” into unseen and alien aspects of our environments. Their Leviathan is a vertigo-inducing study of the human relationship to the sea. The film evokes mythologies of the sea, while also addressing urgent contemporary concerns regarding the place of the human in the cosmos.

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Bight of the Twin (2016)

by Hazel Hill McCarthy III
with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge

Saturday 13 January, 18:00

Sunday 14 January 14 13:00

A documentary film that will take viewers to Ouidah, Benin, the geographic heart of the Vodoun religion, to explore the relationship between Vodoun and Western secular art and performance by trying to answer the question of what embodiment is. An experimental visual and musical journey that weaves a narrative from disparate worlds. The sonic landscapes is built through using tracks by COUM TRANSMISSIONS, THROBBING GRISTLE, PTV and DJM[REX.

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Lucifer Rising (1974)

by kenneth anger

With a new live soundtrack by Tomaga (UK)

Saturday 13 January, 19:30

The cult classic with numerous magical symbols and allegories, ranging from ancient Egypt to Aleister Crowley’s Thelema will be accompanied by the London based improvisation duo Tomaga which created a new live soundtrack for the film.

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On Tender Hooks (2013)

by Kate Shenton

Friday 12 January, 19:15

Saturday 13 January, 20:00

The first feature film from accomplished short filmmaker Kate Shenton, On Tender Hooks is a documentary film delving into the world of human suspension and the people involved. She spent a year following a different people and group of suspenders. Every Sunday they pierce themselves with hooks and hang in mid-air from rigs in a display that challenges the perceptions and squeamishness of even the most hardened. The film is a fly on the wall documentary showing how the ordinary human body can achieve extraordinary things. The film depicts a wide variety of experience and opinions, and delves thoughtfully into a deeply misunderstood practice

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Buster’s Mal Heart (2016)

by Sarah Adina Smith

Wednesday 10 January, 21:30

Sunday 14 January, 14:00

Enigmatic thriller about paranoia and loss of identity, Buster’s Mal Heart is a psychological brainteaser with Lynchian touches. Buster occupies vacant holiday homes, which he leaves in perfect order without stealing anything. In a former life he was Jonah, a night clerk in a remote hotel. One day an unknown man walks in. He warns Jonah about society and the dangers of the upcoming year 2000. Buster’s Mal Heart revolves around the mystery of how Jonah became Buster and the more we find out, the more the boundaries between dream, delusion and reality start to blur.

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Shorts:

Friday 12 January

18:00- 19:30, 22:00-00:00

Saturday 13 January

19:00-20:00 – 21:00 – 00:00