Visiting Lecture Series #1 Jessica Ekomane

“Jessica Ekomane is a French-born and Berlin-based electronic musician and sound artist. Her practice unfolds around live performances and installations. She creates situations where the sound acts as a transformative element for the space and the audience. Her quadraphonic performances, characterized by their physical affect, seek a cathartic effect through the interplay of psychoacoustics, the perception of rhythmic structures and the interchange of noise and melody. Her ever-changing and immersive sonic landscapes are grounded in questions such as the relationship between individual perception and collective dynamics or the investigation of listening expectations and their societal roots.” – https://jessicaekomane.com/about

Jessica had a background in Art History before discovering Sound Art,  “Art spaces are less inclusive than music spaces in terms of class” she went on to say… “Rhythm isn’t as academic, you react directly with it – more democratic.” I find it very interesting this notion of sound/rhythm being more democratic, and in the sense of trance-like states being achieved within the halls of a church, an acoustic chamber. – Jessica very eloquently deconstructs quite complex ideas and displays them in a stark, effective way for people to understand. Her work almost showcases the nature of rhythm, and how it’s immediately accessible to everyone in our innate understanding of what it is, and how rhythm can create trance-like altered states in people.

Multivocal – Important Records (2020)

Multivocal was born out of a piece for quadraphonic sound-system. Exploring what happens when a sequence of notes are slowly moving out of sync with each other one millisecond at a time – the initial chords begin to spread out as the pieces get more and more expansive. Jessica talked about the way the repetitive nature of the piece allowed you drift in and out with it, forming repetitive moments which begin play on themselves as they shift apart and closer provoking trends in the chord so that you end up existing within it. – not simply hearing it presented in front of you.

Ekomane mentioned in our lecture that she was influenced by Gyorgy Ligeti’s Poeme Symphonique for 100 Metronomes. A piece where 100 metronomes are set off at the same time, all one milisecond out with eachother. This is a very striking multi-sensory piece, not only for the sound produced by these metronomes but the visual aspect. Multivocal trades in that visual aspect for the quadraphonic sound system which allows you to exist within this process of stretching and compressing of rhythm, and whilst equally a mathematical demonstration of a process, one that is more trance-like and meditative and entirely focused on sound. The arpeggiated chord is at times reminiscent of minimalist composition.

http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/

Jessica Ekomane also has several works that are concerned with sociopolitical issues, like Citizen Band. – in this piece we almost feel like we are invading peoples privacy as conversations are recorded over CB Radio. A public airway used for short term communication, often used for truck drivers to communicate over. Ekomane has taken a series of clips from conversations she overheard on this frequency in order to ask questions of privacy, as anonymous people say questionable things over the air we feel like we are prying on conversations we shouldn’t hear. However these are not private communications and things you can choose to turn on at any time. It maybe asks questions about whether we should instantly trust technology we interact with. In an increasing digital age where our data is mishandled and questions of integrity are aimed at corporations like Facebook, Apple and Huawei. Do we already partially live in a surveillance state?

Tribute to Whistle – 5 Pieces for Natascha Sadr Haghighian.

“Five pieces presenting two fictional scenarios, based on the idea of using the whistle as a communication tool for self-organization, by re-appropriating and re-purposing law enforcement tools and techniques.”

“Four pieces using the Boatswain’s call as a sound source. This loud and high-pitched whistle is used by the Navy to pass commands to the crew in situations when the voice could not be heard over the sounds of the sea.

I imagined two to four people piping their coordinates to each other from each side of the Central Mediterranean Route. They end on the sentence ‘Calling all. This is our last cry before our eternal silence’ – the final message transmitted by the French navy when the morse code was internationally abandoned.”
“A group of four young people warning of police presence by using dog whistles to secretly whistle the note A-C-A-B.”

In this situation, whistles being repurposed as a tool to redistribute power to the oppressed, out of turn with their usual use as forms of organization against the oppressed in society – or to signify societal norms. This in turn with her piece ‘Comedown’ performed at Berghain a notorious club in Berlin, Ekomane seeks to deconstruct the political nature of club music and scenes.

The use of language that permeates club music, and the negative or problematic connotations of some of that language. She describes some of the language in sample packs she found on her instagram as containing ‘traces of capitalism’. In line with her general interest in trance-like sound, she seems to be fascinated by the sort of commodified escapism that club music represents. She asks questions like ‘what is the function of club music’. And ironically dismantles it, much like she deconstructs rhythm in Multivocal. Taking the building blocks apart and displaying them neatly. The build up to the drop. Seperated from the drop. Musical elements seperated from rhythmic elements. Vocal seperated from music. ‘Destroy’, ‘Bombs Drop’, Keep On Fighting’ – she asks us to examine the origins of what now is the DNA of club music and forces us to engage with our minds. Reinforcing masculinity and violence, usage of warfare terminology, there is this strange counter balance from being an anti-capitalist experience to reinforcing it’s most heinous values. Ekomane referring to Clubbing as a function within Capitalism to forget about capitalism. Yet it also it being an industry, there is a certain amount of hypocrisy to the experience. The money in EDM and Ibiza, it’s soul purpose is lifting you out of your reality into a trance-like state, yet it’s (as of before pandemic) a huge global industry with some of the richest musicians today, with most of it’s highest earners being men. At the beginning of our talk she talked about the duality of listening with your heart and mind. And how both are equally important organs. Our mind switches off with a simple digestible rhythm and with all these other bodies in a social space we are encouraged to move by our hearts – we are forced to examine here in a sterilized setting, with our mind. This piece reminds us that the ways in which we try to escape capitalism are still deeply deeply political.