pascal battus & christophe cardoen put on two blazing shows in thessaloniki & xanthi in the middle of june amidst total darkness and audio-visual overload. well, not exactly overload, as i wouldn’t necessarily describe their work in such an oppresive manner, but i can happily say that quite a few people walked out from the thessaloniki show with their notions on these performances positively challenged.
the armoury enlisted by christophe was selected lights, control devices & an on-the-spot construction to help diffuse the lights in the space, while pascal had with him a wide range of objects (from coffee mixer, to ebows, to shards of metal) that he used to excite two isolated guitar pick-ups. and while during the soundcheck i enjoyed seeing them work parallel with each other -subtle modifications in the lights from christophe, long stretches of aural explorations from pascal where he would stumble upon a rich source of musical sounds coming from his objects, staying with them until depletion- it was during the concert itself that they concentrated on bringing all the elements together. taking into full account the enviroment and the people gathered they worked less on their own contribution and more on responding with joint, fully improvised, actions. and at some point, after some initial long stretches of silences combined with darkness punctuated by measured sounds & flicker, they exploded into our eyes surpassing all expectations of what an improvising duo like this could achieve.
as for xanthi, nicolas informed me that they rocked. and as for my small set opening the show at thessaloniki, all i can say is i sucked; big time. but oh well, this is supposedly the stuff that only makes us stronger.
hats off to the wonderful people at horos theatre company who hosted the show in thessaloniki. the encounter with them was fruitful & of course the show couldn’t have been set up without their help.
a view from the window
some of pascal's tools
show inside
