GÉRALD KURDIAN (FR): THE STRENGTH OF THINGS

15/22/9/2013. non stop @ SEK Hall in &TD Theatre, artistic residency

In co-production with Perforations festival and in partnership with French Institutes in Paris and Zagreb.

 

Since the release of his first record under the name of This is the hello monster!, Gérald Kurdian develops a unique approach of musical performance questioning our different relationships to spectacle and the attuned sharing of its production. Working mainly on stage, he nevertheless tries to break open its limits, using pop music and its surroundings as a stimulating kit of critical tools. He wishes today to re-experiment the challenge of a new record and, in the same movement, to question his own understanding of what a concert can be, this in the frame of a project, The Strength of Things.

The imaginary field of The Strength of Things brings together the idea of an aging body, a history of technological progress, of political conflicts or sexual practices, for example. It confronts the basis of pop composition (verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus) and the synergetic use of different documents sampled on internet, produced with iPad applications (3D modeling, augmented reality, etc) or recorded with esoteric practitioners (psychics, energeticians, astrologists, etc), businessmen and gym subscribers.

Kurdian - Copy

Live, it takes place as an augmented concert which various objects (songs, videos, actions) could simultaneously call upon and examine the codes of a pop culture swiveling between the archaism of its collective traditions and the industrial perspectives of its marketing. It hence carries in itself number of questions relating to progress and influence of our medias and domestic new technologies (tablets, computers, smartphones) on our bodies, our imaginaries, our perception of reality. It is in a way a scope on our collective unconscious and an opportunity to take a global view on the strange and sometimes absurd dialog the contemporary individuals keep up with themselves.