Within just a few years, the Incite/ duo has made a name for itself on the A/V performance scene. Initially known to an audience seeking abrasive sounds, Kera Nagel and André Aspelmeir have gradually synchronized their electronic rhythms and post-industrial flavours with silvery-white visuals splashing all over them on stage…
These images both suggest dreamlike and hyperrealistic, geometric and organic elements, which combine in a "semi-narrative" script. Their previous live-set, Dualicities, supported by Arcadi and presented at the Nemo festival, won an award last may at the 14th international biennale of Media Art in Wroclaw, Poland. For the upcoming season, Incite/ has concocted a new performance named Zoom Studies to be premiered in France, at Issy les Moulineaux, as part of the events celebrating the 10 years of Le Cube. It should indeed restate the image/sound synergy that runs through each of their performances. Part of the soundtrack of these 2 performances is available on their album Dare To Dance, which has just been released. Interview.
How did Incite/ form and evolve into audio-visual performances …?
Our musical collaboration started as an experiment — we've both been producing music before and met each other at a concert for experimental electronic music in Hamburg. Like with many solitary “electric” workers, the main challenge was to explore the common ground and find a way to work together. We developed a specific style of bone-dry minimal experimental electronics and went on a US-tour with incite/ and our solo-projects in summer 2003.
Soon after, our first "audiovisual" experience was in a club in Madrid, where they had a local VJ for the night, thus also for us. He was doing what probably was his regular set — nuclear explosions, silhouettes of dancing girls, all of that. It was so distracting and at the same time not fitting at all to how we felt our music. We realized how much visuals can change the experience of sounds, so the same should happen in a positive way: we decided to create our own visuals. Small scale first: a DVD running prepared loops in the background. This did its job in a way but we wanted to take it further, so in late 2004, after some experiments with slides, we started with synchronized videos and premiered our first AV set at the Ausklangfestival in Hamburg…
Our main concern in this phase was of course to develop an aesthetic language that was shared between sounds and visuals. We found greyscale abstract patterns to be a perfect representation of our audio at that time, Mindpiercing. The visuals were always based on our own filmed footage, until today, we haven’t used a single clip that we didn’t create — recording the footage and editing — ourselves.
Concerning the stage setup, we're really happy with it, so we kept it almost the same: us moving in front of the screen in the middle of the picture behind a table covered with white cloth, only the size of the screen grew much bigger over the years.
We started performing on international festivals more often in 2006, did another U.S. tour in summer 2007, developed our abstract visual style further by having the original footage shine through more often, which went along well to a music that got a little release on the handbrakes, bit by bit.
In 2007 and 2008 we were awarded for our live-performances on three occasions, and in 2009, Arcadi gave us the opportunity to create an entirely new live set (Dualicities), based on urbanity, focussing on Paris and Berlin… Visually, Dualicities was the first project where we used HD footage, which created entirely new opportunities, get a tiny little narrative in this process — we call it "semi-narrative". This, we developed further in our Zoom Studies set, which we think is even more immersive. Visualisation of sound lets the members of the audience experience music very differently and opens for them a new "view" on our music, which normally may be a bit strange to their ears. And indicating a story keeps the attention of the audience on the scene.
On this subject, what will be the theme of these new performances and how does it compare to Dualicities…?
Soon after the Dualicities premiere at Némo in April 2010, we started working on our next project, Zoom Studies, where we focused on macroscopic perspectives and developed new working techniques for ourselves (and got even a bit more semi-narrative this time).
Zoom Studies also comprises different items of compositing, the individual visuals feature techniques from stop-motion to macroscopics, subjects from our bicycles, a mannequin-puppet struggling itself free from chains, flames/fire and crashed glass to body aesthetics and "the avatars", a kind of "making of" track, that is not directly part of Zoom Studies.
People told us each of our tracks feature a wealth of information that some other artists use for an entire live set, and we play eight or more of those tracks in a gig... Besides this, there's a high level of detail in our pieces, a bonus people who listen and watch attentively get. Also in this respect, Zoom Studies drives it even a bit further than Dualicities.
You are going to premiere Zoom Studies at Le Cube, in Issy-les-Moulineaux : what will constitute this stage performance…?
After some tests of the beta-version of some of our new tracks we are looking forward to the French premiere of the entire Zoom Studies set at Le Cube! The set starts with an ambient intro-track about the beauty of a dismal place. Musically, the set develops up to unorthodox danceable breaks'n'noises, visually it explores different subjects macroscopically…
A few words about your next project…?
Now that Zoom Studies goes on stage, we are working on a new live-set that’s scheduled for autumn 2012. It focuses on our hometown, Hamburg, and merges our experiences of Dualicities and Zoom Studies on a new level. A kind of urbanity 2.0 with macroscopic influences. You’ll see even a bit more "semi-narration" there and we are composing some exciting music to drive incite/ further on.
Interview by Laurent Diouf
Published in the Digitalarti Mag #7.
Digitalarti Mag, the international digital art and innovation magazine.
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