Essl, Reardon, Lacina – Creating a Body of Vibration
CLIENT: BMCA Storage
WORK: Writing an Article about the "M!NDF*CK" experimental Ensemble and their performance at the BMCA Storage
Essl, Reardon, Lacina – Creating a Body of Vibration
For the third time, the BMCA Storage will be filled with cosmic sound waves and occupied anew as part of #occupyBMCA. Karlheinz Essl performs together with Edward Reardon (USA) on the piano and Herbert Lacina (Vienna) with his 12-string bass. The three artists, composers and performers form the M!NDF*KC ensemble, in which they improvise experimentally together since November 2023. M!NDF*KC creates an unstable network and shows unstable and fragile connections. It is a non-linear oscillation system that draws on feedback processes and thus constantly reconfigures itself. The performance takes place amidst the works of Olga Georgieva. Georgieva’s works focus on interpersonal relationships. She also links or separates them with red threads, creating a fragile network. The performance reacts in the same way, stretching around Georgieva's works like a thin, delicate net and allowing them to react to each other.
The catering is prepared, the wine chilled. The three artists prepare their instruments for the performance. Slowly, the guests start to arrive. Finally, the room is well filled and after the welcoming speech of Alexandra Grimmer, the performance begins. It is interesting to hear how the three different instruments react to each other. The piano with the keys, the bass with the strings and the synthesizer with its cables and buttons. And yet – despite the different haptics and sounds of the instruments, they complement each other in a wondrous way and take us on a journey of sound. By modulating the different instruments with effect devices or analogue interference and friction, I am suddenly no longer sure whether it was the piano, the bass or the synthesizer that I had just heard. And suddenly one hears how the individual instruments disperse, each going its own way, playing a solo. Only to cross their paths again and getting entangled into a mass of sound. A mass which goes from harmonic to strong dissonance between the tones. The body of sound in the room is made to vibrate, do Georgieva's works vibrate with it? Do the wooden works and canvases in turn influence the vibration in the room? The performance allows to see the works of Georgieva in a different perspective, and the visitors can wander through associative trains of thought provided by the experimental and unpredictable sounds. M!NDF*CK allows us into a new micro-cosmos of possibilities, the variety of sounds seems inexhaustible.
Text: Neve Regli
Photos: Rita Chen