12 January 2012: Mattin & Anthony Iles: 'Noise & Capitalism: Funeral & Zombification'

Noise & Capitalism: Funeral & Zombification by Mattin & Anthony Iles

Lecture - performance January 13 

This public performance lecture will inaugurate the first of a series of workshops that will reflect on and ‘dig the grave’ for Noise & Capitalism (2009) a publication edited by Mattin and Anthony Iles. More than two years after it's publication, what is the relevance for the book's attempt to understand the practices of noise and improvisation in relation to capitalism? So many world-changing events have taken place in the intervening years, how has capitalism and the struggles within it changed and how does this reorient us critically to the object of this book? The editors propose an open process of reflection for the publication in joined effort to rework, rethink and identify its problems. This process will be guided by a performance that will introduce the book content and pave the way for ‘collective study’ between the authors and the audience; a proposed collaborative exercise against the grain of self promotion often found in the ‘book launch’ form. Furthermore, this evening aims to blur the boundaries between ‘author’ and ‘audience’; to block the valorisation of either authoritative or distinguished subjectivities, and to experiment and put into question how we may invalidate such subjects’ accumulated ‘capital’ by releasing unquantifiable and non-exchangeable ‘product’.

Noise & Capitalism’ is a collection of essays by various musicians, academics, activists which reflects on the artist-audience binary, specifically how “noise,” “improvised” or “free” music offers resistance and tensions that may, at worst, provide instruments for capitalism but also, at best, point to modes of ‘subjectlessness’. Noise & Capitalism is available for barter or free download at the audio lab division of Arteleku:

http://www.arteleku.net/noise_capitalism/, http://www.arteleku.net/audiolab/ or via www.mattin.org.