On Saturday 12 November Viral Radio presents the first performance of austere electronic music duo Raime in Amsterdam. They will join reknowned French multi-instrumentalist – and friend of Non-fiction – Pierre Bastien at the Moving Buildings Festival. Moving Buildings is a festival on music and media art, organised by P60, the Schouwburg Amstelveen and Cobra Museum of Modern Art

Raime draw explicit inspiration from the marginal mavericks of early European goth, minimal dance and synth wave – artists largely omitted from the current master narrative of post-punk history, who strove to make music at once cerebral, visceral, and futuristic.

“London duo Raime made the most creative use of the space … the music hovered, like Herzog’s lens, on the threshold between alien beauty and human brutality.” Wire live review from Unsound Festival, Poland

Pierre Bastien is a French musician, composer, and instrument builder. He began building mechanical-based musical instruments at an early age, using items such as metronomes, cymbals, and pulleys.

He has collaborated with artists such as Robert Wyatt, Jac Berrocal, Jaki Liebezeit, Pierrick Sorin, and Issey Miyake. He has worked with us on numerous different projects, like Aura at Castrum Peregrini, Hear it! at Stedelijk Museum, and Nachtsalon at Museum Energetica.

The performances of Raime and Pierre Bastien start at 21.30. They will be supported by Viral Radio resident DJs. Tickets are available at the venue. More information at http://movingbuildings.nl and http://p60.nl.

Jacob Kirkegaard will present his new work 'Labyrinthitis

Our vehicle for the propaganda of new music Viral Radio has contributed to this year’s Discovery Festival, that will take place at Science Center NEMO in Amsterdam this Friday 24 September. The festival is organised to celebrate the pleasure of finding things out, through scientific experiments, art installations and music performances.

For this occasion, we have invited Danish artist and investigator of sound Jacob Kirkegaard, and French composer and architect of mechanical orchestras Pierre Bastien (who recently replaced Darkstar at the Bimhuis during the Viral Radio Festival 2010). Jacob will talk about and demonstrate his recent project ‘Labyrinthitis‘, ‘an interactive sound piece that consists entirely of sounds generated in the artist’s auditory organs – and will cause audible responses in those of the audience.’ Jacob was our first ever guest at Lantaren/Venster in Rotterdam, with Fennesz in 2006. Pierre will install another orchestra of automated instruments, an image straight out of a Gondry film. His work has been shown around the world, and he has worked with Squarepusher, Jaki Liebezeit and Robert Wyatt (and if you are friend or follower of our activities you already know we are fond of him).

We are proud and happy to be part of this inventive festival, and we look forward to seeing you there this Friday. Tickets are available at the door for 10 euros. Please visit www.discoveryfestival.nl or Facebook for the complete line up and more information.

A recent performance by Pierre Bastien at De Verdieping (photo: René Passet)

Another week of Non-fiction events in Amsterdam, starting with the collaboration with the Filmmuseum and DOKU.ARTS festival on Wednesday at De Verdieping. We will screen the documentary ‘Rem Koolhaas – A Kind of Architect‘, with a brief interview with festival director Andreas Lewin. Entrance is free of charge. More information on this on Facebook.

On Thursday there will be the second and final Aura Salon at Castrum Peregrini. After last week’s abstract performance by Machinefabriek, now we have our French friend from Rotterdam Pierre Bastien. He will be joined by Theu Boermans (actor, director and screenwriter), Amie Dicke (artist), Dragan Klaic (theater scholar and cultural analyst), Tracy Metz (journalist), Macha Roesink (director Museum de Paviljoens) and Henk van der Waal (poet).

Thanks for your interest once again, and we look forward to welcoming you this week.

Pierre Bastien, Somewhere in the Dark (photo courtesy of the artist)

After the success of Viral Radio and the Brainfeeder attack last Friday, there are two other musicians we would like to present to you tonight at De Verdieping, two of the kindest people of electronic music: Daedelus and Pierre Bastien. The former hails from Santa Monica, played bassoon and clarinet before solitarily enjoying rave music at a young age, and participating in the development of a remarkable music device, the Monome. The latter is a French composer, multi-instrumentalist and literature Phd from Rotterdam, idolised by Squarepusher, Aphex Twin and Icarus, who constructs his own landscapes of automated music machines, forming an orchestra of kinetic instruments.

Bastien will premier new work, while Daedelus will perform with, and talk about the Monome in a sitdown with Juha. This event takes place in De Verdieping, the underground basement of Trouw Amsterdam. Doors open at 8.30 PM, and admission is a mere 8 euros. Cinnaman and Juha will play surrounding music. Here are the links for Last FM and Facebook.

We hope to see you there.

What does a contemporary artist do with the vibrant past of a former hiding place on one of Amsterdam’s canals? Is it the aura, the uniqueness and authenticity of this place to be captured and can it be transformed into something new and relevant? Those questions live at the heart of the art project Aura: an exhibition and a series of events in the historic premises of Castrum Peregrini Foundation, where in WWII young German Jews survived in hiding. Since the war the time seems to stand still in this labyrinth of rooms and passages. A small part of the first generation lives there to date, in the middle of countless antique objects, books and pieces of art they produced and collected. In the coming years the house will be partly opened to the public.

To mark this transition Non-fiction’s Michiel van Iersel invited nine artists from different disciplines to choose a historic object, a story or a person as a point of departure and use it for a new artwork. The writings of pre-war German literary critic Walter Benjamin formed the basis for the project, and his signature is included in the show. The results of this ‘artistic recycling’ vary from installation art, ink drawings, photography and film to conceptual furniture, poems and a short contemporary radio play. The exhibition of works will start in the new project space of Castrum Peregrini, moving up the old staircase into the deserted apartment of a late inhabitant where the past is still perceptibly present.

In conjunction with the exhibtion a series of Aura-salons with guided tours, performances, statements and music will be hosted by Castrum Pegrini. Non-fiction’s Juha van ‘t Zelfde has invited the French composer and multi-instrumentalist Pierre Bastien and Dutch electro-acoustic musician Machinefabriek to perform during two consecutive Aura-salons. For more information on the Aura-salons, the exhibition and the official opening please visit: Castrum Peregrini website

Aura-exhibition
From 14 May until 21 June 2009
Wednesday through Sunday 13:00 – 18:00 hrs
Admission 5 Euro, 18 years and younger free

Location
Castrum Peregrini
Herengracht 401
1017 BP Amsterdam

Participating artists
Amie Dicke (visual artist, NL)
Chris Kabel (designer, NL)
John Kleckner (visual artist, USA)
Susanne Kriemann (visual artist, D)
Jan Robert Leegte (visual artist, NL)
Alexandra Leykauf (visual artist, D)
Erik Lindner (poet, NL)
Renée van Marissing & Allerd van den Bremen (theater-makers, NL)
Henk van der Waal (poet, NL)

And original works from the collection by
Max Beckmann
Walter Benjamin
Gisèle d’Ailly van Waterschoot van der Gracht
Simon van Keulen

Official opening Aura-exhibition (free for all)
Thursday, 14 May, 18:00 – 21:00 hrs

Aura-salons
Thursday, 28 May, 20:00 – 23:00 hrs
With contributions by Allerd van den Bremen, Machinefabriek, Erik Lindner, Renée van Marissing, Joachim Umlauf, Ton Venhoeven

Thursday, 11 June, 20:00 – 23:00 hrs
With contributions by Jan Baeke, Pierre Bastien, Theu Boermans, Dragan Klaic, Tracy Metz, Henk van der Waal

Finissage Aura-exhibition
Sunday, 21 juni, 14:00 – 20:00 hrs

Informal Aura-drink
Every friday 17:00 – 19:00 hrs

The Aura project is being made possible through the generous support of:
Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst
VSB Fonds
Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds
Lira Fonds
Goethe Institut Amsterdam
Genootschap Nederland Duitsland

Dorian Concept live at the Bimhuis (photo: Eline Soumeru)

In a period of just over a month, we have the privilege to present a staggering amount of our favourite musicians from every frequency imaginable. From the high-end sonic textures of Chris Clark to the tactile tectonics of Hyperdub messiah Kode9, and from the  Michel Gondryesque orchestre mécanique of Pierre Bastien to the this-is-what-the-internet-must-sound-like aesthetic of Oval.

Here is the full list:

03 April > Viral Radio invites Clark. With residents Cinnaman and Juha
Venue: Trouw Amsterdam / time: 22.00 – 03.00 / €12,-

04 April > Pan Sonic and Oval
Venue: Bimhuis / time: 20.30 – 01.00 / €12,-

24 April > Beat Dimensions with Kode9 & the Spaceape ‘Bass Fiction live’ and Dimlite. With residents Cinnaman and Juha
Venue: Bimhuis / time: 23.00 – 03.00 / €10,-

01 May > Viral Radio invites Flying Lotus, Gaslamp Killer and Samiyam. With residents Cinnaman and Juha
Venue: Trouw Amsterdam / time: 22.00 – 05.00 / €12,-

06 May > Daedelus and Pierre Bastien
Venue: De Verdieping / time: 20.30 – 23.30 / €?,-

We hope to see you at one (or more) of these nights, and we thank you kindly for your support.

Last Friday was the opening of ‘Plan Zuid, in bewerking’, an exhibition by architecture students in De Verdieping. You can see the pictures in our new flickr group, or at the Facebook page. You can also follow De Verdieping on Twitter, where you will see the bits that fall in between the tubes and never make it to any blog.

Our next event will be either on Wednesday 1 or 8 April. We will start with our weekly Wednesday night, with interviews, concerts and film screenings. In April gallery Gabriel Rolt will do a public screening of Shezad Dawood‘s film ‘Montana’. In May we will most likely see Daedelus and Pierre Bastien talk about and showing their musical machinery.