Kalas Liebfried
Corps-á-Corps feat. MC Nancy
listening session
9. November 2018, 7pm
PLEASE NOTE: The evening starts at 19 Uhr with drinks and the listening session with commence promptly at 20 Uhr. Due to the concentrated nature of the performance, visitors will not be allowed to enter the kino once the presentation begins!
Schedule:
19 Uhr: drinks in the Foyer
20 Uhr: Opening remarks in the Kino, reading of Gerko Egert's text
20:15 Uhr: listening session begins (duration 46 minutes)
21: music and drinks in the foyer
On 9 November 2018 at 7pm, Kunstverein München presents Corps-à-Corps feat. MC Nancy, a new work by Kalas Liebfried. Staged as a listening session held in our Kino entirely in the dark, the project explores the affective relations between electronic music and the (inter-)subjective body, omitting visual stimulus so as to emphasize somatic perception.
Corps-á-Corps is the French expression for close fighting. Translated literally it means ‘body-to-body‘: referring to the close relation between individual bodies, as well as their physical and mental conditions as collections of “items, pieces, limbs, areas, shapes, functions. Heads, gristles, burns, tendernesses, splashes, sleep“ – corpus corporum.
Kalas Liebfried’s works, including video, sound, performance and sculpture, emerge from the appropriation, decoding, and montage of found footage material into narration. Often focusing on the ephemeral structure of the body, his practice explores and visualizes traces of the unconscious, transitory conditions, and in-between media spaces. Liebfried‘s new electronic music piece and essayistic album Corps-à-Corps feat. MC Nancy is based on the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy‘s aphorism collection “58 indices sur le corps“ (“58 indices on the body“, 2004), which explores the way one can negotiate and perceive the “pieces, areas, fragments“ of what we call a body. Liebfried uses found footage material of Jean-Luc Nancy reading the indices and transforms his voice into the verses of a MC who is ready to set a dancing crowd into a Dionysian flush. These samples are combined with synthesizers, saxophone, and percussion to produce a dynamic narrative composition akin to a symphonic film soundtrack, evoking scenes in the minds of the visitors. By forgoing any imagery and blanketing the visitor in darkness, the focused presentation renders the assembled bodies into resonant conduits for rhythm, all chiming to Jean-Luc Nancy’s disembodied cosmic voice.
The evening will begin with a reading of Tanzen, tanzen, tanzen, a new text by the dance and theater studies scholar Gerko Egert that interprets and extends the structure and themes of Corps-à-Corps feat. MC Nancy. Liebfried’s audio work will be then played in its entirety, producing a hybrid somewhere between a philosophical lecture, an experimental cinema, and an underground club. Afterwards, drinks will be served, and music will be shared that draws from the litany of sonic, thematic, and compositional references in the project.
The evening will also mark the release of the project in the form of a double LP of custom-cut Dubplates sponsored by Duophonic GmbH (Augsburg).
Co-produced and mixed by Lobo at Kraftraum 404 (Munich)
Additional recordings: Mathias R. Zausinger (sax) and Miko Watanabe (tamtams, jazz drums)
image: Kalas Liebfried, detail from Da Vinci Landscapes (2017), uv print on artificial leather, diptych, 150 x 100 cm.