Born From Death

Born From Death (Chaos Edit)

ART AND EXTRACTIVISM READING GROUP 
9 August 2021 online
Pilot Part 2

READING AND DISCUSSING TOGETHER. This reading group is especially oriented towards reading together rather than reading outside the group. We hope that this close reading strategy can be a small act of resistance against the cultural colonization of Western academia, the hegemony of English, and the codified distinctions between the academic and the “non-academic” or the artist. There is no commitment to join for more than one session. Non academics who want to involve critical theory in their work but normally don’t have access to text based resources or the time to do research are encouraged to take part. We also make space for defining and translating words for non-native speakers who don’t have access to translations into their home language(s).
WHAT WE EXPLORE

ART AND EXTRACTIVISM investigates how extractive processes (environmental, intellectual, and physical) are replicated within the performing and in particular the sonic arts. The concept of extractivism situates all kinds of “innocent practices” as carrying the potential for exploitation and harm. We use extractivism in order to problematise a number of related phenomena—from the environmental extracation of minerals, gas and water from the ground, we expand to include the extraction of (creative) labour from (precarious) bodies, the recording of sounds, words, ideas and images from sentient beings, as well as the “mining of the exotic” in terms of content branding and other new economies from our very selves.

ART AND EXTRACTIVISM explores the following questions: What are the problematics of extraction which appear within (always-already) hierarchical collaborations? How can processes compromised by extractive dynamics resist extraction? How can we name them, rather than erase them? What are the limitations of the extractivist framework? Are there other ways of finding reciprocal relations between artists, subjects, and nature?

ART AND EXTRACTIVISM itself should resist extractivist practices by reaching towards collective practice, whereby each member chooses one text (one chapter or short text selection) that they feel could shed light on the topic. We will read the text together, rather than outside of the group, and discuss the text within the meeting time. Since it is assumed that members of the group are not supported financially to spend time researching, or in general supported by arts or academic institutions, the group aims towards generating conversation and thought that can be useful towards our work and not become extractive labour. 

To that end, ART AND EXTRACTIVISM is also geared towards non-academics who wish to involve critical theory in their work. The idea of the group is to provide a safe space to discuss critical theory outside of established spheres of audibility (i.e., the academic classroom) and to create an environment where those who generally think of themselves as non-academics can interact with critical theory without the pressure of competing or keeping up with others’ knowledges. We will work towards establishing dialogue amongst artists and workers who would like to engage with some of the body of academic work which has been done “about” the worker or the artist, and see how we can relate it to our everyday and real world experiences. In this sense we attempt to resist the extractivist practice that theory engages on the body of the worker or artist.

Art and Extractivism Reading Group Pilot Part 2

ART AND EXTRACTIVISM READING GROUP 
9 August 2021 online
pilot part 1

READING AND DISCUSSING TOGETHER. This reading group is especially oriented towards reading together rather than reading outside the group. We hope that this close reading strategy can be a small act of resistance against the cultural colonization of Western academia, the hegemony of English, and the codified distinctions between the academic and the “non-academic” or the artist. There is no commitment to join for more than one session. Non academics who want to involve critical theory in their work but normally don’t have access to text based resources or the time to do research are encouraged to take part. We also make space for defining and translating words for non-native speakers who don’t have access to translations into their home language(s).
WHAT WE EXPLORE

ART AND EXTRACTIVISM investigates how extractive processes (environmental, intellectual, and physical) are replicated within the performing and in particular the sonic arts. The concept of extractivism situates all kinds of “innocent practices” as carrying the potential for exploitation and harm. We use extractivism in order to problematise a number of related phenomena—from the environmental extracation of minerals, gas and water from the ground, we expand to include the extraction of (creative) labour from (precarious) bodies, the recording of sounds, words, ideas and images from sentient beings, as well as the “mining of the exotic” in terms of content branding and other new economies from our very selves.

ART AND EXTRACTIVISM explores the following questions: What are the problematics of extraction which appear within (always-already) hierarchical collaborations? How can processes compromised by extractive dynamics resist extraction? How can we name them, rather than erase them? What are the limitations of the extractivist framework? Are there other ways of finding reciprocal relations between artists, subjects, and nature?

ART AND EXTRACTIVISM itself should resist extractivist practices by reaching towards collective practice, whereby each member chooses one text (one chapter or short text selection) that they feel could shed light on the topic. We will read the text together, rather than outside of the group, and discuss the text within the meeting time. Since it is assumed that members of the group are not supported financially to spend time researching, or in general supported by arts or academic institutions, the group aims towards generating conversation and thought that can be useful towards our work and not become extractive labour. 

To that end, ART AND EXTRACTIVISM is also geared towards non-academics who wish to involve critical theory in their work. The idea of the group is to provide a safe space to discuss critical theory outside of established spheres of audibility (i.e., the academic classroom) and to create an environment where those who generally think of themselves as non-academics can interact with critical theory without the pressure of competing or keeping up with others’ knowledges. We will work towards establishing dialogue amongst artists and workers who would like to engage with some of the body of academic work which has been done “about” the worker or the artist, and see how we can relate it to our everyday and real world experiences. In this sense we attempt to resist the extractivist practice that theory engages on the body of the worker or artist.

Art and Extractivism Reading Group Pilot Part 1

Critical Magic

Octomantic Ritual

Dongdaemun

Banishing

Our Intention

What Can We Dream Here?

Depart the Octagon

Come Together

Binaries

Clean and Unclean

Centering

What Are We Traces Of?

Born from Death

It Was Not the Earth

We Open a Portal

We Are Water Flowing to What End

Oh So Bright

Critical Magic Remixed

Hyenaz vs Strip Down (Strip Down Remix)

Hyenaz vs. Autist (Autist Remix)

Burning Tonight

Audibility

Audibility (feat. Donato Laborante)

Perimeter

Perimeter (Maya Postepski Fantasy Remix)

Hyenaz

Heat

Bone

Plastic Islands

Sister

Ex Situ

Ex Situ (feat. Yusuph Suso)

Ex Situ (Sky Deep Remix) [feat. Yusuph Suso]

Perimeter (IXA Transopticon Remix)

Signals

Berlin electronic avant-gardists HYENAZ have evolved a cult status for their immersive live shows, for which they were dubbed a “performative monster duo” by electro superstar Peaches and one of the “Best Live Acts in Berlin” by Kaltblut magazine.

The process of birthing the second HYENAZ album “Critical Magic” has already taken the band from Berlin to Korea, China and Japan, through Europe and back. Its path has been ritualistic and intentional; it has already seen an explosive dialogue between audience and performer around the world.

The process began in mid 2014, with a site-specific performance called “Spectral Rite” at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, Korea. The goal was to create a magical ritual that would challenge the authoritarian power structures of the museum itself and society at large. HYENAZ traveled to a farmhouse outside of Berlin, joined for part of the process by visual artists Sylbee Kim and Nico Pelzer.

There they used “Chaos Magic”, an unorthodox, post-modern magical movement where practitioners construct spells and rituals from the context in which they find themselves. What they found in Chaos Magic mirrored the artistic game approach to creativity that HYENAZ had learned from an encounter with the activist-poet C.A. Conrad on their last USA tour. The pairing of these influenced helped to craft a set of generative techniques for the texts, tones, movements and visuals of the museum performance and the album “Critical Magic”.

Two weeks of spells, artistic games, and psychedelic experimentation followed: HYENAZ took walks through the forest recording spontaneous melodies into a Zoom recorder; they holed themselves up in a basement, sampling ancient water boilers and scrap metal to turn into the synth patches and percussion that populate the album; they sat in fields writing lyrics as a collective, each responding to the fixed commands of the task they had divined.

Critical Magic builds on the experimental spirit of their first self-titled endeavour, which was released by the LA-based Records Ad Nauseam. More than just a concept album, Critical Magic can be understood as a singular cohesive spell, a flow of incantations leading to a height of gnosis and ending in a reality transformed by the performance of the magical ritual. This journey is represented in part by a fracturing of genre into flow: Synthpop devolves into broken beats, tech-house into horror-wave into bounce into manic laughter. The flows of the album are guided, above all by the needs of the ritualistic practices they immerse themselves in, above all other considerations.

To place HYENAZ it is necessary to look beyond music; to understand them as thinkers, dreamers and movers concerned with the multiple, with the alien-self, and above all with possibilities for self and social transformation through artistic practice and the performance of ritual. 

Binaries 두가지들

It is in mountains that the deep history of the world reveals itself, and it is in the play of sediments that the consciousness of minerals reveals itself. This consciousness mirrors in some ways the parasympathetic nervous system of human life, with its long neural pathways and preference for homeostasis: we are closer to rocks than we realise.

At this time, patterns of migration once again are compelling Europe to face once again the deadly paranoid mechanisms of othering by which it constructs its sense of self. The slow dance of rocks across generations is an encounter of entities that resists being subsumed by the hyperventilation of fear produced by a crisis mindset. 

The sounds of Clastic emerged from a field recording and electronic production workshop HYENAZ led in the Graie mountains at CLASTIC – European Performing Arts Residency (https://clasticresidency.wordpress.com/), with the participation of: Durassie Kiangangu, Morena De leonardis, I Patom Theatre, Silvia Ribero, Angie Rottensteiner, Kazalište Nezamislivog Iva Korbar, and Elena Brea Sandin.

The sonic movements of CLASTIC respond to the deep temporality of this landscape and the singular existence of the individual stones, branches and other objects that make their home there.

The EP will be released under a Creative Commons non-commercial licence. Money from sales and streaming of the EP will be donated to the refugee and migrant rights organization SOS Mediterranee https://sosmediterranee.de

Clastic

Intact Remains of An Ancient Reef

The new single Columns by Berlin performance duo HYENAZ. The track, with its shades of industrial techno, is in fact built entirely from vocalizations and organic percussion scavenged deep within a cave outside the pilgrimage town of Częstochowa, Poland.

Buy it here: https://obskurmusic.bandcamp.com/album/columns-ep

HYENAZ - Columns (Original Mix)

Follow HYENAZ on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/follow/1?uri=spotify:artist:7FvuDYlrZROxL08qKlyKrT&size=detail

Born From Death sounds like parallel universes crashing in on each other at a dirty warehouse rave.

HYENAZ (Kathryn Fischer and Adrienne Teicher) wrote Born From Death on a psychedelic journey in an old farmhouse owned by a queer collective outside of Berlin. The pair were preparing for a movement performance at Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul with the artists Sylbee Kim and Nico Pelzer.

“The vocal at its core was actually some off-mic chatter we recorded by accident, and fell in love with.” HYENAZ explain. “We pushed these little grains of sound as hard so we could take a part of this experience with us and carry our altered states beyond into the everyday world, into the lifeworlds of our listeners.”

Born From Death appeared on the Critical Magic album that HYENAZ composed as a continuous musical chaos magic ritual lasting an hour. The “Chaos Edit” lifts the track from the broader soundscape and into a space where it can stand by itself, at parties, on dance floors, or at least for the time being, in the imagination.

HYENAZ are Berlin-based sound and movement artists Kathryn Fischer aka Mad Kate and Adrienne Teicher. The dance tracks, soundscapes, performative installations and a/v works they produce are based on the sonic shapeshifting of field recordings gathered in the process of site-specific works.

Since 2015 HYENAZ have been working on a music, performance and sonic research project they call “Foreign Bodies,” a slow movement journey to explore relationships of “bodies in motion and bodies in resistance”, be they human or of other sentience. Central to this project is the idea that the body is disappearing: from social interactions blasted into the corporate cloud, to machine intelligence tangled in the systems that govern life, to techno-futurists fantasies of an age where analogue flesh has vanished into digital consciousness.

Their first release for Foreign Bodies PROXIMITY was an act of listening and learning from non-human animals, frogs in particular, to think about how proximity changes relata between bodies. The track premiered in the poetry journal Interim as a/v poetry–a contemporary dance music video with integrated text that the duo choreographed and edited themselves. A virtual sculpture PROXIMA debuted at the Near-Field Communication Digital Art Biennale and is now traveling around Europe.

Their second release, Columns, is HYENAZ’ response to militarized violence. The track, which sounds like industrial techno, is built entirely from vocalizations and organic percussion scavenged deep within a cave outside the pilgrimage town of Częstochowa, Poland.

They are now releasing the a/v work and remixes PERIMETER on June 3rd 2021. With Foreign Bodies HYENAZ build on their reputation as visionary performers. Electro superstar Peaches called HYENAZ a “performance monster duo” in The Guardian. They have performed twice at Berlin’s world famous techno mansion Berghain as part of Your Moms Agency’s Digital Art Meets Music series and once to support CHRISTEENE and have been energetically touring the world, from SXSW to the MIDI Festival Shanghai; from techno festival Garbicz to the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, where HYENAZ produced Spectral Rite with the visual artists Sylbee Kim and Nico Pelzer.

The body has always been central to the work of HYENAZ, but Foreign Bodies examines questions of embodiment with an ever sharpening focus. In a frame from PROXIMITY, text flashes on the screen asking: HOW MUCH OF MY BODY COULD I LOSE. Another frame asks: DO YOU RECOGNISE ME / MY / YOUR SOVEREIGNTY and DOES OUR PROXIMITY BIND US? The pain of having and being a body in the 21st Century fuels HYENAZ drive to bring bodies together in a room and fight alienation.

HYENAZ

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