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Mattin

Seize the Means of Complexity (LP Art edition + Multiple)

Label: Xing

Series: Xong Collection

Format: LP Art edition + Multiple

Genre: Sound Art

In stock

€50.00
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Tip! *20 copies limited release* Xing presents the LP Seize the Means of Complexity by Mattin, ninth release of XONG collection - artist records. The release is on white vinyl, in a limited numbered edition of 150 copies. The collector's edition consists of 20 copies, each accompanied by a different polaroid - credit card size - portraying fragments from the social media universe.

Seize the Means of Complexity, the new record by Mattin is a call for all social media users of the world to unite: "We are in the asshole of history. Broken individuals struggling with mental health, media obsession, need for attention and legitimation. Burning souls searching for validation, suffering from imposter syndrome in a post-Netflix wasteland. From the ruins of our subjectivity, something can be built; something must be built. To seize the means of complexity, we must comprehend the tools of algorithmic subsumption, and leverage that knowledge to steer their development towards an open-source conception of subjectivity. We should all have access to the codes, technologies, models, and complexities that shape our lives. By embracing noise rather than shying away from it, this adaptive open-source subject could pave the way for a future transcending capitalist realism and its end of history, forging a new form of communism fit for the 21st century."

Seize the Means of Complexity is the recomposition of some materials Mattin used in his interactive performances over the last year: a mass of musical fragments that crystallise as a call for mobilisation.
 As the title of the album advises, or rather states: to not be crushed by the symptoms that social media produces on us, we must seize the opportunity opened up by the internet in its widest complexity. How can we collectivize the psychosomatic consequences produced by the Meganets? How can we reverse-engineer social media? The new record by Mattin, commissioned for Xong collection, contains recordings from TikTok and Instagram (hits, pop songs, advertising and voice), that can be heard as a chorus of fragments from the multitude addressing psychic destabilization and the horizon of paranoia and alienation. This plunderphonia of sounds transmitted by the global media opens the possibility of addressing what it means to be human beyond the liberal individual. Seize the Means of Complexity is a proposition, a sonic stage for something to happen.

Mattin is a Basque artist working with improvisation and noise, in the broadest sense of the term: exploring its potential rather than adopting it as a mere musical genre. Through his practice and writing, he explores performative forms of estrangement as a way to deal with structural alienation. Using a conceptual approach, Mattin betrays any expectation, redefining the social architectures of space, questioning established conventions and the stereotyped relationship between an 'active' performer and a 'passive' audience, and introducing the energy of a live presence that does not presuppose any limits. Working with different media and formats, Mattin seeks to address the economic and social structures of experimental music production through live performances, recording and writing. Mattin is part of the bands Billy Bao and Regler and has over 100 releases on various international labels. He has exhibited and toured worldwide. He has performed at festivals such as Performa (NYC), No Fun (NYC), Club Transmediale (Berlin), Arika (Glasgow) and has lectured and taught at institutions such as Dutch Art Institute, Cal Arts, Bard College, Paris VIII, Princeton University and Goldsmiths College. In 2017 he completed a PhD at the University of the Basque Country under the supervision of the philosopher Ray Brassier. He runs the experimental record labels w.m-o/r, Free Software Series and the net-label Desetxea. He edited the collection of texts Noise & Capitalism with Anthony Iles (Kritika/Arteleku 2009), and is the author of the books Unconstituted Praxis (CAC Bretigny & Taumaturgia 2012) and Social Dissonance (Urbanomic 2022). The volume Abolishing Capitalist Totality: What is To Be Done Under Real Subsumption? is in preparation (Archive Books).

In 2023 Mattin released the album Seize the Means of Complexity, LP, Xong collection/Xing (Bologna); Fragmented Life, LP, bruit direct discs (Paris); Slices of Life with Asha Sheshadri, CDr Edition, Eric Schmid (NYC); Homage to Annea Lockwood with Noel Meek, book+CD, Recital Records (Los Angeles) and as Regler+Courtis regel #13 (Noise Rock), LP, Nashazphone (Cairo). He is currently co-hosting the Social Discipline podcast with Miguel Prado, started in 2021. Prado and Mattin are also part of the Noise Research Union with Cecile Malaspine, Sonia de Jager, Martina Raponi and Inigo Wilkins. Mattin took part in documenta14 in Athens and Kassel with Social Dissonance (2017), a durational concert lasting 163 days, collapsing formats and playing with different levels of visibility and invisibility. Currently at the Galerias Municipais in Lisbon is in progress The Expanding Concert (2019-2023), a four-year concert distributed in time and space through different media. Among his interventions in Italy we remember the choral polemos No No Nono No NO! (2015), a composition by Mattin commissioned by Xing on the occasion of the project RESISTENZA ILLUMINATA. Homage to Luigi Nono in collaboration with the Teatro Comunale di Bologna Foundation.

Details
Cat. number: XX09
Year: 2023