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Motek

Motek (BE)
Motek is a three-member post-rock collective with roots in Aalst and branches in Ghent and Brussels. In February 2005 they already performed at Netwerk, since then there have been gigs at the Herbakker in Eeklo, at the Depot in Leuven, at the museum MIAT in Ghent, and so on. They are currently working with Rodrigo Fuentealba (Fifty Foot combo, Gabriel Rios, Novastar, …) and preparing the release of their E.P. with Karel De Bakker (Zita Swoon, An Pierlé, …) in studio ‘Rat en Kabel’.

Motek is distinguished from other groups by their consistent research into the relationship between image and music. From the very beginning, they worked with visuals, created and edited in synergy with the music. An initial batch of visuals included material from the archive of American Rick Prelinger, who collected educational, propaganda and other bizarre films from the 1940s-’60s. The combination of these silent movies on post-rock accompaniment creates a wry sense of nostalgia and (mis)hope, reminiscent of early Godspeed you! Black Emperor.

In a second phase, Motek went in search of recent material, and found it among others with American video artist Corey Smith, and Belgian video artist Floris Vanhoof, who was guest curator for Xploding Cinema – the experimental section of the Rotterdam International Film Festival. These short films do not seek the nostalgic so much as the poetic power of the everyday world. Music accompanies these snapshots, turning them into charged images that transform the world as we experience it daily into a place of imagination and intensity. All these collaborations between Motek and video artists result in a synaesthetic whole experience: the eye merges with the ear.

In a third stage, Motek will not change the visuals, but rather the space in which the images and music come together. At the audiovisual performance at arts centre Netwerk, the immediate contact between audience and musicians will be broken, by placing the musicians in an enclosing structure. This minimal architectural intervention shifts all attention to the audiovisual space, created by three mesh screens on which mixed images of the audience, musicians and visuals can be seen. However, at times this space will also dissolve as soon as light appears within the structure, making the musicians visible again.

In this performance for three musicians, a cameraman, two vjs and the audience, Motek explores the boundaries of a live performance, by engaging or not engaging with the audience. In the scene setting, both the audience and the musicians are confronted with the desires and phantasms always present in pop and rock performances: do I want to listen or watch? Do I want to watch, or be watched? Do I want my images, or those of others? Do I want to be alone with the music, or alone with others? What do you want?

Confronting three types of images – real, camera, music visuals – also raises the question of the nature of imaging in rock performance: can the three images go together? Or does one destroy the other?

Perhaps the most pertinent question is this: where is the line between a rock performance and a performance Where is the difference between music and imagery….

In this audiovisual space designed by each present, a tangle of music and image, of absence and presence, of desires and projections, of the real and the imaginary emerges.

www.motek.be

Dj Peter Velleman
Peter VellemanDj set by Peter Velleman. (Valleyman, Electromen, Launch Project) From floating electronic & ambient scapes to dubby slow grooves & new electro. Peter Velleman started his career as a bass player in a local rock band. Strongly influenced by krautrock, electro, new-wave and industrial, the new music styles that characterised the eighties, he started stringing together records. He later discovered ambient and delved into Brian Eno’s ambient collection and style in particular.

03.04.2006 20:30