"What's happening? What's happening?" Homage to Phill Niblock

We cordially invite you to participate in a memorial evening dedicated to the artist Phill Niblock, who died on January 8, 2024 in New York. As a part of the evening, we will screen a sample from Niblock's film opus Movement of People Working series (1973-1991). Free entry.

In this film he was inspired both by his collaboration with a dance troupe as well as by his truly nomadic nature. Captured during his trips to Peru, Mexico, Hungary, Romania, Hong Kong, Brazil, Lesotho, Portugal, China, Japan, Indonesia and the Arctic, it contains more than 25 hours of footage. Long shots document variations of quickly disappearing physical work such as cutting, chopping, knitting, cooking, field work, dyeing fabrics, fishing, etc. and focus on repetitive details of hand movements or the choreography of human bodies. An essential part of the projection are the sounding parallel textures of minimalistic microtonal surfaces and, last but not least, their appropriate volume level.

The American, but mainly cosmopolitan artist (born in 1933 in Indiana) became established on an international scale with his musical compositions, film and photographic work, video or works constructed on computers. In the mid-sixties, he arrived in New York and - similar to Woody Vašulka and Steina, became not only a part of, but also an important agent in the turbulent experimental scene there. He originally graduated in economy, but first dedicated himself to the documentation of the local jazz community with a photographic and film camera, and inspired by performances of La Monte Young, Max Neuhaus and others - mastered the technique of working with tapes. By layering individual tracks of recordings of instrumental timbres, he experimented with perception, sound, space and overtones. Already his first micro-interval compositions from the late 1960s resonated with his famous creative principle:

"No harmony. No melody. No rhythm. No bullshit."

From the mid-1960s he became involved with the Experimental Intermedia Foundation in New York and later became its director. In 1973, two years after the opening of The Electronic Kitchen, he and a team of collaborators started in a large loft on Canal Street in Chinatown regular music and intermedia shows for the public. This program continues to this day, featuring several hundred musicians, filmmakers and intermedia artists from around the world. In the same year, he started a series of documentary films/videos, having previously worked on computer-generated abstract moving figures in black and white. In addition, he ran the associated label XI Records. Niblock's music has been released on music labels such as Moikai, Mode, Touch and the aforementioned XI Records; Label Extreme distributes DVDs of his films and songs. In 2014, the Contemporary Art Foundation awarded him the John Cage Award.

Since 1992, when he took part in the first Hermit Symposium at the Plasy Monastery, he has been visiting the Czech Republic and Slovakia almost every year. In the last 20 years he has been a regular guest of the biennial Ostrava Days of new music. Almost twenty of his compositions, often orchestral, were performed at the twelve editions, hardly to be realized elsewhere due to the large orchestra. His new composition was performed at the High Noon concert in September 2023.

The evening was prepared by the Vašulka Kitchen Brno collective in cooperation with Experimental Intermedia, New York, Punctum and Singuhr Berlin.