– DIALOGUES, OBSERVATIONS and REFLECTIONS about ACTUAL ARTISTIC POSITIONING and CURRENT PRACTISES ... a QUEST for ACTION and RE-POSITIONING
How do I actively and positively relate my artistic practice to the ways of the world at large and my artistic environment specifically as I see them developing now?
Is there still a place for integrity and an ethical position towards our environment and how would I, personally create, define and eventually protect this place?
What compass should we use to establish this position when we have observed that we, individually, are moving against a constantly moving canvas, background, television screen with its constantly and per second generated 'new' data?
What do we do with the traumas of the images we are bombarded with every day through the ever present information channels we cannot really trust?
Starting from the (post) traumatic symptoms that seem to become louder and bigger in this era, I have a need to at least partly unbuckle from the pole-position seat in my own life, step out of the speedy vehicle of my own choice and sit down with a few fellow guild brothers and sisters to address questions I can no longer permit myself to negate.
I want to see this trajectory as a wandering through my own consciousness, my daily world and daily practices, my neurosis and wounds. Starting from my own (probably) clumsy, personal reflections about these burning matters, I want to lay down my weapons and defenses and have dialogues with fellow artists in whom I see the same questions and pains and the warrior spirit that awakens through them.
This trip includes talks with Vaast Colson (Bel), Diego Chami (Arg/Berlin), Anna Konjetski (Münich), Elke Van Campenhout (Bel), Jean-Yves Evrard (FR) and more random and surprise meetings along the way...
Furthermore I want to seize this trajectory to investigate and develop alternative views, perspectives and practices regarding my own artistic processes and work.
Some kind of 'landing' and culmination in the way of a public showing of materials, notes and newly generated perspectives on work is to be expected october 2014.
a Biography denied:
I am a drummer/percussion player/composer/sound artist. My work is often related to as 'shamanic'. Although this is not a definition I would officially use to determine my work, I can see where people using it come from and I gratefully accept the implied connotation as it pays respect to my lifelong search for resonances, both ancient and actual, received from the outer worlds and other people or self produced by our mysterious brains and consciousness. It is hard to really know the difference, isn't it? We, human beings, only have begun to explore the times and spaces in which we blindly dwell.
I am also often referred to as a constant seeker.
I see myself as a pilgrim, a wanderer through the mutilated inner and outer landscapes of this planet we created for ourselves. My path is music. I don't look at my path as a 'job'. Neither is it a commodity or product although it seems unavoidable to have it sold or sometimes sell it as such in this actual time and place. I am not out of this world, neither would I choose to be so.
I personally (although I'm sure I'm far from being alone!) choose to live this life as a warrior.
In these times of google searches and the likes it won't be hard to find excerpts, footage, traces of my existence with my music on the web. I generously let you be creative to find out with your own inner compasses what there is to be found and if informations such as this bio and those snippets resonate with and have meaning for you.
I want to restrain from giving it this kind of meaning to you myself. And this for more than one reason.
Both my personal life, my life in music and my spiritual life (it is hard to make a separation really) often seem fragmented. There seems no real story line. There are sudden stops in what appears to be some kind of line. My story is surely not linear. It is surely not causal and logical either.
Therefore you might find it easy to observe quite some discontinuities and inconsequences in what appears to be my musical or personal biography. I personally choose to stand behind this fragmented view. To let it be.
What glues the bits together is my spirit, my consciousness.
I invite you to decide yourself where you stand and what you want to see and get out of it.
I don't want to win souls for my case.
Rather would I encourage you to win your own soul for your own case.
See you on some road somewhere!
Eric Thielemans supported by the Flemish Ministry of Culture, hosted and supported by Platform 0090.
