Corina MacDonald: Your live performances seem strongly rooted in improvisation and play – would that be an accurate description of how you work together? Anne-Françoise: No. Yes. Mmmh. Play is always there. Improvisation happens actually more when we work together in our atelier than in live shows, where we play around a set of possibilities we already decided were interesting - it's not pure improv. While working together, we spend a lot of time playing with objects, modifying them, building absurd machines or instruments. And after periods of experimentation we decide what we like the best. Nicolas: Playing together often takes the shape of a sonic discussion: it's possible to "talk" both at the same time, but it's interesting when there's some back and forth sort of exchange going on. Sometimes it also takes the shape of two streams side by side, influencing each other along the way. AF: We also spend a lot of time talking and drinking coffee. Generally, too much of both. CM: Does collaboration allow you to carry out sound experiments that you cannot do in your solo work? N: When i work on solo stuff i have always a lot of bad habits: working really slowly, using the same equipment, letting months go by until i finish a piece, then erasing everything, etc. Collaborating helps keeping things lively and reminds me to keep the focus on the important part of the job. In particular, working with Anne-Françoise has always been great: i get to learn a lot about sound, and we exchange a lot of ideas on aesthetics and such. It led us to develop our own little version of what people call sound art. Ok, i'm going to stop here for now. AF: Yes. And it's not always clear why. Maybe because of what we think minibloc is we limit ourselves, and that limitation makes us pursue more stubbornly certain directions that end up being interesting. Also, working with somebody else it can be easier to feel that what you do is good enough - and that allows sound experiments that wouldn't happen otherwise. Or, maybe we just have funny weird ideas together. CM: You are active within a larger community of sound artists, musicians and potential collaborators – how does that community inspire or influence your work? AF: What we do within minibloc is a small scale version of what we do in a larger group of audio artists: play together, steal other people's ideas, talk about our current projects, go see each other playing shows, drink together our free beer tickets. N: It's all good! |
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