In 2008, a German SPD politician announced that the era of top-down authority was finished. The times when one person could shut down all discussion with a single word — basta! — were over. He meant it as liberation but the phrase did not stay that way. Whether it signals freedom or its removal depends entirely on who is holding it, and from where.

Die Basta... with LIMINAR at the Foro Internacional de Musica Nueva in Mexico

As far as I keep observing humans around me, I keep making pieces about this. The way systems persist regardless of the intentions of the people inside them makes me chronically sad (I have been the only one responsible for my sadness anyway). It's the way resistance is real and gets absorbed, the way hope is the machine's favorite fuel. So, I built a room where it could happen in front of an audience. I designed the mattes — printed cards, each carrying a symbol, activated by foot — and I have been one of the two conductors in every performance, which means I am inside the thing I made, every time, with no more control over the outcome than anyone else. Two of us on stage with full authority: hands, arms, feet, the whole body. Real octopuses as instruments of power. We compete for musicians, claim them, steal them from each other. And the musicians can refuse — they can stay where they were, ignore both of us, follow only what they hear. The choice is real. I made sure of that.

And the loop takes everything anyway. What the body remembers and plays back is never exact — that gap, small and unintended, is the only freedom that survives the structure, but if it is not enough to change anything, is enough to make the music.

I have been here before — in The Mexican National Anthem, in Maquina Latina, in Metrónomo y Esperanza, and many others. Each time the human gesture is authentic. Each time the system is more durable. I keep arriving at the same place and I keep finding it worth showing. 

MOSAICOS

(A mother-cell piece)

Berlin, 2007

For amplified ensemble, piano, and percussion

open length

2007: open_sources 07-2, Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield, UK

2007: open_sources 07, Kulturbrauerei Berlin – Kesselhaus, Germany

Coimission: Ensemble Mosaik

single-conductor mattes

Mosaicos with Mosaik at Huddersfield contemporary Music Festival