doundo/recycling G
Q-O2 occupies a specific place in musical life. Through its conceptual principles, it blurs the boundaries of the traditional concert circuit and finds gateways to other disciplines and new approaches. While the twentieth-century repertoire retains its importance, the emphasis is on searching and the new. Since 2006, Q-O2 has therefore been recognised as a workshop for experimental contemporary music and related arts. For Q-O2, the ideas of John Cage and the Fluxus movement form a solid foundation on which it grafts its artistic goals and aspirations. The scope and artistic relevance of their insights are only now taking on their full importance and reaching beyond the traditional concert situation. Q-O2 moves away from the romantic paradigm that the performance of music should be an evocation of feelings. Music is an abstract medium and remains so in our approach to it. On that ground, this approach is intellectual but by no means elitist. Notwithstanding the relative closeness of the idioms used, Q-O2 strives to be as accessible as possible in its approach.

doundo/recycling G is a Q-O2 project initiated by Julia Eckhardt (viola) and Ludo Engels (recording). Together they built up a reservoir of sound over the course of a year. All possible shades in a ‘prepared’ G-tone are sought, found, played, sequenced. Overtones and undertones sometimes alienate into quasi electronic sounds. Q-O2 then sent the recordings to a selection of (sound) artists for further processing: Stefaan Quix (BE) / Sergio Merce (AR) / Lucio Capece (AR) / Jens Brand (DE) / Aernoudt Jacobs (BE) / Jim Denley (AU) / Julia Eckhardt (DE/BE) / Ludo Engels (BE) / Anne Wellmer (DE) / Els van Riel (BE) / Manu Holterbach (FR) / Michael J. Schumacher (US)

The artists tackled the sounds in their very own way: purely electronic or with live instruments, as concert composition or installation, with or without images, improvised or written out. With today’s reproduction possibilities, the notion of “unique untouchability of a piece of music” is fading. Julia Eckhardt, as an acoustic musician, had to accept that Ludo Engels’ recording and arrangement sounds different from what she thought she had played. Ludo Engels in turn hands over the recordings to get them back edited beyond recognition. Reproduction techniques make international meetings with artists easy, both geographically and in terms of medium and style. The recordings were sent to artists from very different backgrounds from Argentina to Berlin.

In Netwerk, all the different versions are juxtaposed for the first time. Thus, in the course of one evening, the diversity of approaches to the same tone becomes clear and clear.

www.q-o2.be