[Event ]Encuentro de artistas y proyectos musicales experimentales en CSO el Escombro

During the 13th and 14th  of December there was a convention on CSO El escombro, a self-managed social center that provides space for culture and leisure.    Many artists of the area and other regions met around this event, that seeks to rescue experimental art forms or art that has no room in the traditional art circles or of mass consumption.



On the first day, I arrived to the talk about noise in art and music , where they talked about different artists and artistic trends that experimented with noise and sound, surpassing the limits of the traditional standards of what is the meaning of art,  during the last century.

One artist worth mentioning is Luigi Russolo, for example , an Italian painter and compositor  part of the Futurist movement , and one of the first noise music experimental composers , creator of a series of noise-making devices with the name of "Intonarumori".

They also mentioned the Fluxus movement or Intermedia , the spiritual sucessor of dadaism in the 60s, that inspired by John Cage,  called into question the definition of what is art. . One of the most known members of Fluxus was Yoko Ono.

Nowadays, theres many projects around the world involving the use of noise as a way of destroying the limits of what rock or free jazz bands were doing, considering it something boring.   In Japan, for example, theres a specific musical scene called by critics as "Japanoise", having a lot of musical freedom and being less serious than the common "noise music" bands from other parts of the world, trying to be louder and more ridiculous than in other places.  Some examples are Masonna, Merzbow or Hijokaidan.

After the talk, there was a Fruityloops workshop, to learn to basic of this music software, which was very concise but I still learned some tricks to use on the program.

At the end of the day, all the people that were in the event were invited to become part of a jamming session with anything they wanted, from guitars, to percussive elements, everything was permitted. It was very entertaining, I played for about 1 hours or more with everyone.

The second day of the event, it was the show of each band, from Concepcion and other regions. Some of the bands from Concepcion  cancelled their participation , which was a bit dissapointing but at the same time it gave more space for the bands from other places to play and show their performances.  The bands were good, I still try to figure how they made some sounds I listened during their performances.   A funny situation was on the presentation of "Psychotic Aliens", they didn't had a bassist so they offered me to play with them (it was all improvised), and I had just played bass two times in my entire life. The last performer (the name of his project was Karla Sepúlveda), caught my attention, he used a "noise shaker", a device I use to see on Masonna shows or similar , but never thought some Chilean had one , they are usually handmade.

Well, concluding this article, I would like to say I really enjoyed the experience of meeting with people interested on building a experimental noise scene on Chile, and I hope they repeat the same event every year.  

What do you think about this type of music ? Leave your comments down below!