ARTAUD AND NOISE: LIVE ELECTRONIC DISSECTIONS

Venue: Visconti Studio, Kingston University, Kingston Hill, London

Date: 29 July 2024 7-10pm

Curator: Richard Crow (Institution of Rot)

INSTITUTION OF ROT – LONDON (institution-of-rot.org)

[Musical Instruments] will be used for their qualities as objects and as part of the set. Also, the need to act directly and profoundly upon the sensibility through the sense organs invites research, from the point of view of sound, into qualities and vibrations of sounds to which we are absolutely unaccustomed, qualities which contemporary musical instruments do not possess and which compel us to revive ancient and forgotten instruments or to create new ones. They also compel research , beyond the domain of music, into instruments and devices which, because they are made from special combinations or new alloys of metals, can achieve a new diapason of the octave and produce intolerable or ear shattering sounds or noises.

Antonin Artaud, The Theatre of Cruelty (Musical Instruments, in First Manifesto),1932

Artaud and Noise – Live Electronic Dissections investigates and celebrates the legacy of Antonin Artaud and the Theatre of Cruelty in the context of Industrial and Experimental Noise music. As Artaud writes in The Theatre and its Double (1931-32) the use of music(al and non-musical instruments) in the Theatre of Cruelty’s first manifesto must be imagined as ‘sounds that cannot be endured’. For Richard Crow this was a rallying call for new and extreme sounds and a definition of what noise music would/could hopefully become, and it is also inextricably linked (for Crow) to John Cage’s statement ‘you don’t need to call it music, if the term shocks you’.

Since the mid-1980s performer and sound artist Richard Crow has engaged with Artaud’s writings as a key source for the exploration of the disruptive, visceral, and affective qualities of noise and its psycho-physical implications for the listener.

Together with Adam Bohman he established the live improvisation duo Diastolic Murmurs in 1985 and performed what they called Live Electronic Dissections