For over a decade, Basque artist Mattin has worked collaboratively to make improvised noise concerts characterised by clusters of silence, scything feedback howls, and haunting shrieks, which are...Show moreFor over a decade, Basque artist Mattin has worked collaboratively to make improvised noise concerts characterised by clusters of silence, scything feedback howls, and haunting shrieks, which are produced digitally with guitar, amongst other instruments. Often improvising with a an invited set of guests, Mattin’s noise concerts create situations of instability and uncertainty, and perhaps even a sense of danger, through the drama of his aesthetic which antagonises his audience, forcing them to become active participants whether they are willing or not. By engaging collaborators and audience alike, Mattin uses his noise concerts as a tactic to activate a shared state of political agony in a period of Western capitalist society’s demise. Operating at the borders of noise music as a genre, Mattin’s improvisation practice is supplemented by his exploratory writings on improvisation and the importance of free software – a position he claims against the perils of intellectual property, defying any sense of ownership or property we may have. Mattin has over seventy albums attributed to him under several labels around the world, and has also independently founded the experimental record labels w.m.o/r and Free Software Series, as well as the net-based label, Desetxea. He releases and distributes his music under the no-license of anti-copyright, which further ramifies his political methods that are non-conformist and non-profit. Problematising the occularcentric tendencies within art history, which privilege the visual over the sonic, this paper investigates Mattin's practice in terms of his own doctrine of noise practice, situating it as worthy of analysis within this disciplinary frame. Centering on Mattin’s contemporary practice I will investigate what is at stake in his quest to “cuts things up” and will do so by identifying a wider historical and socio-political context for his practice, touching on rock history and a number of other conceptual artistic practices. Through this lens, I will examine the political efficacy of Mattin’s methods in challenging authorial status; the relationship between performer and audience; as well as how such socially-inclined art practices can engage and contribute to the struggle against our commodified mode of existence.Show less
