COMPOSER
“Composer” is the meeting of two creatives, the poet Manuel Joseph and the musician motif_r (stéphane chalumeau), whose collaborative work goes back ten years.
“Composer” [from the French verb composer, to compose or put together] here refers to working with words and sounds, the way they can be collected and connected, and also more broadly, to the way that technique, aesthetics and origins contribute to the creation of literary and musical states that can still negotiate with the real.
BIOGRAPHIES
Manuel Joseph
Manuel Joseph is a writer and poet. From the mid-1990s onwards he has been engaged in the renewal of poetic form, favouring techniques such as montage and cut-up, with a quasi-classical approach to structuring and contextualising contemporary data. Via P.O.L. editions he has published Heroes are Heroes are Heroes, 1994; Amilka Aime Pessoa, 2002; La Tête au Carré, 2010; La Sécurité des Personnes et des Biens with photographs by Myr Muratet, 2010; and with Al Dante editions he has published Ça m’a même pas fait mal featuring poetic works by Jean-Luc Moulène, 2001, and De la sculpture considérée comme une tauromachie, 2003. His works have also featured in the following collections: La Gueule de l’Emploi, ERBA Valence, 1999; Toi Aussi Tu as des Armes – Poésie et Politique, La Fabrique, 2012. He has worked with artists Martin Le Chevallier, Anri Sala and Jean-Luc Moulène and, most notably, Thomas Hirschhorn for documenta 11, 2002; Chalet Lost History, Galerie Chantal Crousel, 2008; Flamme Éternelle, Palais de Tokyo, 2012. Thomas Hirschhorn devoted an exhibition and a book to him, entitled Exhibiting Poetry Today: Manuel Joseph, CNEAI/Xavier Barral, 2010.
motif_r(stéphane chalumeau)
motif_r(stéphane chalumeau) is an electronic musican. His work springs from acid, freeform and musique concrete experimentation. He founded the group Ciao! Manhattan, which released an album with Mike Ladd, remixed by DJ Scud. His work includes the English Kittenrock label release Lions & Panzers, which combines granular ambient and mixed dance floor beats. He is also the originator of a long musique concrète work entitled UnZip SONG / between shoots & sleeps, featuring microphone recordings he made in Taiwan and Japan. A pioneer of chiptune, a music genre which uses gaming consoles and old computers to create music in real time, he currently plays live improvised music using deliberately miscellaneous and anachronistic equipment, using hardware which may or may not be “modified”, following in the musical footsteps of Schaeffer, Reibel and Ferrari. He has collaborated with choreographers, video artists and writers on a diverse range of projects.