We had the official launch in February/March 2009. It was a successful series of events and performances that highlighted not only Wald/Forest – the collaborative work by Chris Zeigler, Sandeep Bhagwati, and Han Soo Cho, but also the work of the many artists involved with the lab.
We are now hosting residencies, events, and performances, please subscribe to our RSS feed (see icon below) to get updates as they happen.
Most of our equipment has finally arrived – even if still in boxes…Mathieu Marcoux, technical manager of the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, currently also doubles as consultant at matralab. He has devised a technical ground plan and an equipment management system and now, together with matralab research assistants Michal Seta, Navid Navab and Ralph Denzer, he proceeds to move the lab into working mode. If everything goes well, all set-up and testing will be done by end of January. THEN: Look out for our great launch programme in late feb/early march when matralab will host talks, demos, concerts and intermedia shows by the Bozzini Quartet, Chris Ziegler, Roddy Ellias, the Canadian 60×60 project and many more.
Sandeep Bhagwati had two major premieres in Europe in November. He premiered Racines Ephémères, an evening-length work commissioned by the Essl Foundation at Wien Modern, the largest contemporary music festival in Europe. The piece features eight musicians wandering in three dimensions in a contemporary architectural space. He also acted as artistic director for Rasalila, an East West Music project, at the India Festival Amsterdam. That performance in the Concertgebouw was attended by a number of dignitaries including Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands who met with Bhagwati and the soloists afterwards in a private reception.
As of May 1, Jane Tingley is the new matralab coordinator.
She replaces Veronique Lefort who begins a new career in the movie industry.
Good luck, Veronique – and welcome, Jane !
Between April 18 and April 29, matralab director Sandeep Bhagwati is attending three international workshops and panels.
From April 18- 20 Bhagwati is part of a small number of high-level researchers and composers worldwide to be invited to the annual edition of the “Music+Technology Incubator” -Workshop.
This workshop is a meeting where the future directions of music technology and the aesthetic question of computer music are adressed in 2 intense days of brainstorming and free discussions.
Invited by Stephen McAdams from CIRMMT (McGill), participants include composers Roger Reynolds, Rand Steiger (both UCSD), Hans Tutschku (Harvard), Trevor Wishart (Durham), Robert Normandeau (UdeM) and developers such as Miller Puckette (Max and pd), Jean Piche (TamTam), David Wessel (Berkeley) as well as number of graduate students, among the matralab Ph.D. research assistant D.Andrew Stewart
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From April 23-26 he will be on the music panel of the Goethe-Institute international and multidisciplinary conference on German national culture and its role in a changing and globalized world. Other panelists will include Wladimir Tarnopolski (Moscow Conservatoire), Jean Jeacques Nattiez (UdeM), Christian Kaden (Humboldt University Berlin), as well as Nike Wagner (Weimar) and renowned music journalists Claus Spahn and Wolfgang Fuhrmann.
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On April 28 and 29 he will speak at an international workshop “Creative Dissonances” at Heidelberg University, a workshop on the re-definition of intercultural musicology and inter-cultural composition.
Workshop members include Nimrod baranovitch (University of Haifa), Krishna Bisht (University of Delhi), Hermann Gottschewski (University of Tokio), Rachel Harris (SOAS London), Christian Utz (University of Arts Graz), Gert Matthias Wegner (University of Kathmandu / Free University Berlin) and many others.
Dear friends and students: Matralab will be in residence at the mythical Hexagram Black Box from May 5-16. The first week will be devoted to a theatre production of a new work by Patrick Leroux (more details). The second week will be devoted to ground-breaking work in Music. On May 13 evening (6-9pm) and on May 14 afternoon and evening (3-9pm) I will test and develop a new kind of spatial composition with wandering and partly improvising musicians (a composition I am writing for a festival in Vienna, Austria, November 2008) in the Hexagram Black box, together with musicians from the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne Montreal and their conductor Lorraine Vaillancourt. I would need help from some people for the following tasks:
– printing and photocopying the rehearsal material (May 12)
– setting up the black box (chairs, music stands, lights, floor labels, refreshments) (May 12-14)
– videographing and photographing the rehearsals (May 13-14)
– recording parts of the rehearsals (May 13/14)
– generally being around for listening and troubleshooting, as well as giving feedback to me (May 12-14)
On May 15, matralab in residence at the Hexagram Black Box will host the McGill Digital Composition Studios in a semi-public fashion (only for faculty and students of both universities). Ph.D. candidate and composer D. Andrew Stewart will show new digital instruments used in recent concerts of the Digital Orchestra at McGill and lecture about their design, use and demonstrate musical applications. Open Workshop with possibility of talkback and perhaps hands-on tryout. For this event, I need help to:
– spread the word
– design and put on posters in Music and elsewhere
– again set-up this event (chairs, tables, connectivity)
– video-document the event
Please tell contact us if you would be interested in doing some of the stuff described above. (You may leave a comment at the bottom of this post.) If you know a colleague (composer, musician) who would be interested to experience professional musicians working their way into a new composition, and/or the promise of the newest developments in musical interfaces, please tell them to contact me. Please note: No casual onlookers, everybody who wants to be in the room has to commit to some active help – and I need their student ID’s for Security by May 5 latest. Yours cordially, Sandeep Bhagwati
matralab, CIAM and SAVAP present:
3.
Who: Chi-wang Yang –
What: artist’s presentation
When: march 27- 7:00 pm
Where: HEXAGRAM CONCORDIA
-EV-011-435, Concordia University, 1515 St. Catherine St. West, Montréal, Québec. H3G 2W1
Chi-wang Yang Theater Director and Digital Media Artist
“Inherent in our daily lives is the tactile experience of the world around us, which the body responds to with its own logic and honesty. Yet our perception of the world is increasingly mediatized, accelerated, flattened and fragmented by our interactions with technology. While such “distributed narratives” (to borrow a concept from computer science) can distance us from ourselves, they can also enable us to see with a perspective and intimacy not possible before.”
Chi-wang Yang is a theater director and digital media artist. Committed to physical performance and extra-disciplinary experimentation, his work fuses theatrical tradition with technology and heightened forms of representation through media. His work has been featured at REDCAT (Los Angeles), New York International Fringe Festival, the Edinburgh International Festival Fringe, Time-Based Arts Festival (Portland), and the Platform International Animation Festival. Recent projects include the world-premier staging of composer Sandeep Bhagwati’s Vineland Stelae, conceived as a theatrical concert at REDCAT, and co-directing a week of 365 Plays/365 Days Festival at the Public Theater. Chi-wang recently returned from co-directing a month-long video shoot in Cuba for a new theatrical production titled The Closest Farthest Away/Entrañable Lejanía. Conceived as a hybrid of cinema and theater, the project is being created collaboratively by a team of US and Cuban artists. Chi-wang received his MFA in Theater Directing and Integrated Media at the California Institute of the Arts. Other training includes the SITI Company with Anne Bogart, the Kitchen Summer Institute, and Brown University (BA). He is a founding member of Cloud Eye Control, a performance collective that integrates live theater, animation, and music. He is a recipient of the 2006 Princess Grace Award for Theater Directing.
For more information, please visit:
http://www.mediumtrue.com
http://www.cloudeyecontrol.com
http://www.projectporamor.com
matralab, CIAM and SAVAP present:
DISTRIBUTED NARRATIVES parts I-4
Who: playwright and director *Louis Patrick Leroux
in discussion with Sandeep Bhagwati
*member Permutational Dramaturgies Group
(Sandeep Bhagwati/Jean-Claude Bustros/ Louis Patrick Leroux)
actors: François Bertrand-Prévost, Josianne DiCaire, Valérie Dumas
What: Dialogues fantasques pour causeurs éperdus
(Fantastical Dialogues for Smitten Conversationalists),
a series of nine improbable plays
When: march 11- 7:00 pm
Where: HEXAGRAM CONCORDIA
EV-011-705 Concordia University,
1515 St. Catherine St. West, Montréal, Québec. H3G 2W1
Leroux and three performers will present excerpts of “dialogues fantasques pour causeurs éperdus”, a complex theatre text currently in development. The performances will be intermixed with discussion facilitated by Sandeep Bhagwati. Discussion with Sandeep Bhagwati will be in English, performance of text excerpts in French with one English text, questions and comments will be welcome in both languages.
Patrick Leroux, B.A. Hons (Ottawa, Theatre and French Literature), D.E.S.S. (HEC-Montreal, Arts Management); D.E.A. (Sorbonne nouvelle, Theatre). Doctorate ongoing at Sorbonne nouvelle, holds a cross-appointment in English and Études françaises. He has taught arts management at the University of Ottawa and playwriting at Summer Literary Seminars, Herzen University, St. Petersburg, Russia. He was playwright in residence at Théâtre du Nouvel-Ontario in 1993-94, 2005-06 and 2006-07. He was a resident of the Leighton Artist Colony in Banff and of the CEAD International residency in Tadoussac. He is Artist in residence (Winter-Spring 2008) at Concordia’s Matralab.
Prior to academic life, he founded Ottawa’s Théâtre la Catapulte, which he managed during the 1990s, and worked as a producer, director, designer, and playwright. Over thirty of his plays, radio plays, and scripts have been staged or broadcast since 1992..
1.
Who:Dr Stefan Römer –
What: screening and presentation
CONCEPTUAL PARADISE: there is a place for sophistication
http://www.conceptualparadise.com/english/index.htm
When: March 3rd- 7:00 pm
Where: HEXAGRAM CONCORDIA RESOURCE CENTRE
EV-011-705, Concordia University,
2.
Who: playwright and director *Louis Patrick Leroux
in discussion with Sandeep Bhagwati
*member Permutational Dramaturgies Group
(Sandeep Bhagwati/Jean-Claude Bustros/ Louis Patrick Leroux)
actors: François Bertrand-Prévost, Josianne DiCaire, Valérie Dumas
What: Dialogues fantasques pour causeurs éperdus
(Fantastical Dialogues for Smitten Conversationalists),
a series of nine improbable plays
When: March 11- 7:00 pm
Where: HEXAGRAM CONCORDIA
EV-011-705 Concordia University,
1515 St. Catherine St. West, Montréal, Québec. H3G 2W1
3.
Who: Chi-wang Yang –
What: artist’s presentation
When: march 27- 7:00 pm
Where: HEXAGRAM CONCORDIA
EV-011-435, Concordia University 1515 St. Catherine St. West, Montréal, Québec. H3G 2W1
4. added attraction
Who: “S.Q.U.I.D = Some Quality Undertakings in Improvisation Design”
What: outcome of the course “Structured Improvisation”
When: March 29 3-6pm
Where: room location TBA
Concordia University,
1515 St. Catherine St. West, Montréal, Québec. H3G 2W1
Narrations distribuées (1 à 4): Cycle de conférences organisé par le matralab avec l’appui du CIAM, du programme SAVAP (Studio Arts Visiting Artists program) ainsi que des départements de théâtre et d’études anglaises et du Bureau de la doyenne de la Faculté des beaux-arts de Concordia.
Qui? Stefan Römer. Ph. D.
Quoi? Visionnement et présentation du documentaire
CONCEPTUAL PARADISE: there is a place for sophistication
Quand? Le 3 mars à 19 heures
Où? HEXAGRAM CONCORDIA, EV-011-705, Université Concordia
Professeur en nouveaux médias à la Academy of Fine Arts de Munich, Stefan Roemer établit des liens conceptuels entre les pratiques et les théories de l’art. Ses œuvres ont fait l’objet de nombreuses expositions et ses essais ont été largement publiés. Fondateur du groupe militant interdisciplinaire FrischmacherInnen à Cologne en 1993, il a participé à la création et à l’organisation de l’exposition Messe 2ok de 1995 à Cologne, a reçu le Price for Art Critics du Arbeitskreis deutscher Kunstvereine en 2000 et est, depuis 2003, membre du comité de direction de kunstraum munich.
Publications : en 2001, sa thèse de doctorat Artistic Strategies of Fake – Critique of Original and Forgery et le livre illustré de photos Corporate Psycho Ambient; en 2003, le livre de photos et de textes Encounters with Germans; en 2005, le livre illustré de photos Temporary Architectures; en 2006, le manuel Berichte aus dem Conceptual Paradise/Reports from the Conceptual Paradise.
Pendant trois années de recherche cinématographique, l’artiste et auteur Stefan Römer a interviewé, avec son équipe, de nombreux artistes de renommée internationale. En suscitant un débat d’idées devant la caméra, il a su créer une manière cinématographique personnelle de réfléchir à la situation de l’art contemporain dans le monde. Son documentaire Conceptual Paradise: There Is a Place for Sophistication relate les discussions qui ont donné naissance au mouvement d’art conceptuel dans les années 1960 et abouti aux grands enjeux de l’art aujourd’hui. Les artistes y parlent de leurs pratiques et de l’évolution sociohistorique des différents mouvements d’art conceptuel. Ainsi, il ressort clairement qu’il n’y a pas de définition unique de l’art conceptuel puisqu’un engagement permanent définit sa complexité théorique et philosophique qui peut comprendre, par exemple, la question de savoir si l’art peut se passer de l’objet.
Ces interviews avec les artistes et théoriciens de l’art les plus intéressants de l’heure font ressortir le projet de l’art comme engagement politique et l’idéal qu’il représente. L’histoire de l’art est une histoire des luttes entourant les stratégies de représentation. Ce film-essai sur l’art conceptuel porte donc aussi sur l’art de la cinématographie.
Pour plus de renseignements, consulter le site : http://www.conceptualparadise.com/english/index.htm