TRANSMUSIC COMP. & SNEH

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
kind: AVR Machine_VISUO
title: TRANSMUSIC COMP. & SNEH
Adamčiak, Machajdík, Murin a Cseres
author / editor: Július Fujak
language: english
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[audio1]: audio(+) videotrack - Transmusic comp. a P. Strasser (+)
[audio2]: audio(+) videotrack - Transmusic comp. (+)
[audio3]: audio(+) videotrack - Idea pre jedného muzikanta a okolie (+)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
http://www.radioart.sk/avr/index4.php?img=3
http://www.radioart.sk/rss/rss_radioart.xml
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

TRANSMUSIC COMP. & SNEH
Adamčiak, Machajdík, Murin and Cseres

One of the most significant but, as of today, also most neglected branches of Slovak alternative music is represented by experimental and conceptual music in mixmedial context. The beginnings of this “alternative of all alternatives”, inspired by the Duchamp-Cage and Fluxus paradigm of art, are in Slovakia connected especially to the remarkable initiatives by the unconventional musical bricoleur, graphic artist, author, musicologist, collector, etc., Milan Adamčiak (1946) that go back to the late 1960s and early 1970s (and that have not yet been the subject of a monograph...). Following the Neo-Stalinist era of the 1970s in Slovakia, which for Adamčiak marked a period of virtually uninterrupted creative pause, the tradition of “non-traditions” was again brought to life in 1984 by the meeting of two students of (not art or music but) economy business who were “hunting for new art“: the Bratislava native, experimental instrumentalist Peter Machajdík (1961), and the theatrical conceptualist, performance artist and intuitive musician Michal Murin (1963) from Prešov.

In searching for their own personal and artistic identities during their college studies, they were greatly influenced by publications issued by the Prague Jazz Section (later harshly persecuted by the Communist regime) that dealt with experimental music, performance art, street events, and new age (eastern spiritual teachings); and also by their listening to (post)modern New Music on the Austrian radio station Österreich 1. Even prior to their meeting in person, they had both engaged in first experiments in musical conceptualism: examples are Machajdík’s presentation of music with ping-pong balls, and Murin’s collages of music and „found sounds“ in a theatrical ensemble titled MOPRE-AAADD – MOravsko-PREšovské Absolútne Amatérske Avšak Demokratické Divadlo (The MOravian and PREšov Total Amateurs’ But Democratic Theatre). Such efforts enabled them to move slowly, but with increasing confidence into the space “between” (between traditionally defined art media), with the common denominator of their projects being the intermedial overlap of music and unconventional theatre, poetry, film, happenings, performance, and the overall determining concept of ideas.

Machajdík, via correspondence, attempted to establish contact with world-renowned composers such as Karlheinz Stockausen, Gyorgy Ligeti, Pierre Boulez, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Phil Glass, John Adams, Aaron Copland, Pauline Oliveros and others, who replied by sending him their recordings, books and scores (so difficult to obtain behind the “Iron Curtain”). Machajdík’s apartment turned into a venue for “listeners’ circles” that were, beside Murin, attended by many others interested in contemporary music, among them music college students Robert Rudolf, Daniel Matej, and Alexander Mihalič, and the business college student Jozef Vlk. Machajdík’s (predictable) failure at the entrance exams at VŠMU (Bratislava’s state-run music college), where he presented his early 1980s Kompozícia pre preparovaný bicykel a klavír [Composition for Prepared Bicycle and Piano], did not discourage him from delving into further unconventional activities.

In 1985, Murin drew up an internal manifesto titled Hry hier [Games of Games]. It stipulated the conceptual installation of the experience of music (or of any other art) in human imagination, where listeners could on one’s own, without external contact with a specific artistic creation, “create an inspirational space – in visual, acoustic, tactile, and olfactory terms – for experiencing, or encountering works of art”. The private, “utopian” initiative of music in imagination proved to be as challenging as Marvin Minsky’s ideas (published only much later in Slovakia). In 1986, for the Bratislava event Pamiatky a súčasnosť – Bukovohorská kultúra a hudba [Monuments and the Present Day – Bükk Culture and Music], Murin created the ritually, mystically and spiritually experienced Zemná hudba – archeomusic [Earth Music: Archeomusic] using sounds of natural materials (clay, water, wood). In the following year, he produced the several hours long Vizuálna kompozícia – hudba v mojej hlave [Visual Composition – Music in My Head] that united musical, kinetic, (photo)graphic, textual, and emotional elements and marked the start of his cooperation with the Australian composer Ross Bolleter (Australian presentations and publication of the score of Murin’s project followed in 1989 and 1991); last not least, with Alena Šefčáková, he became co-founder of Slovakia’s first experimental movement theatre, BALVAN ([Boulder], 1987–92), whose performances accentuated the expressive acoustics of body movements.

Yet for the development of unconventional music in Slovakia, 1987 is important for another reason: in the summer of that year, in Slovak Radio’s Electroacoustic Studio in Bratislava Peter Machajdík in cooperation with Michal Murin recorded his composition Harmony inspired by Hindu mythology, using the untraditional timbre of Alena Šefčáková’s voice. The recording session was attended by Milan Adamčiak (then employed by the Slovak Academy of Sciences) whose creative quest had made an impact on both artists. The affinities in understanding the significance of “experimental” music (and other arts) eventually, following a number of “test events”, united the three to form their own unique transmedial ensemble.

Other notable activities and events that allowed artists to approach each other’s work included: in 1988, Machajdík’s and Murin’s appearance, with Martin Burlas, Daniel Matej and others, in Samo Ivaška’s documentary chronicling Adamčiak’s work; the artists’ encounter at the 1st experimental festival in Nové Zámky (during Murin’s homage to Stockhausen Kleiner Harlekin); in March 1989, Adamčiak’s Suterén [Basements] – the first exhibition of his sound installations, objects and unconventional musical instruments, in basements of houses in the vicinity of the original building of the Slovak Radio in Bratislava (curator: Radislav Matuštík); and finally, Simultánne improvizácie [Simultaneous Improvisations]. Initiated by Bolleter, Murin, and Machajdík, they took place on Slovakia’s last socialist May Day (1989). In two locations of the planet – in Bratislava-Mlynská dolina (in the dormitory of a Banská Bystrica construction company) and in Perth, Australia – listeners could simultaneously listen to (and record) collective acoustic improvisations with environments of buildings (such as railings and radiators of apartment buildings, elevator or radio sounds, sounds of found instruments and toys).

On 15 October 1989, a month prior to the “Velvet Revolution” that brought down the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, the Transmusic Comp. (denoting “company, compact, comparison, competence, complementarity, compilation, complex, compliance, competition, comprehensibility”, etc.) ensemble performed for the first time at the exhibition of the Gerulata group in Bratislava-Rusovce. The ensemble, uniting professional and non-professional (non)musicians, graphic and dramatic artists, was in its founding charter defined by Adamčiak as “an open, variable ensemble active in the acoustic, musical, and audiovisual (‘AHA’ [hudba = music, in Slovak]) domain, seeking to explore, extend, and move beyond the boundaries of artistic convention”. The ensemble’s name was an allusion to Adamčiak’s projects in the 1960s that explored connotations of the “trans-“ prefix. The concept of the ensemble’s work was determined not only by his, but equally by Machajdík’s and Murin’s ideas in cooperation with other members. Among them were, in subsequent years of Transmusic Comp.’s (TmC) activities, Martin Burlas, Peter Cón, Michaela Czinegeová, Zuzana Géczová, Peter Horváth, Daniel Matej, Vladimír Popovič, Oľga Smetanová, Peter Strassner, Peter Zagar, Juraj Bartusz, and Zbyněk Prokop.

TmC concerts/performances were characterized by (neo)Fluxus poetics, with artists engaged in untraditional play of musical, or any other sound instruments and found objects: hangers, flowerpots, hockey sticks, builders’ tools, toys, and assorted modified materials – in total, over 500 types of sound home- or ready-mades. Situational compositions (such as Idea pre jedného muzikanta [Idea for One Musician], String Room, People to Poeple, Pre ideu a okolie [For Idea and Environment], Legnavské tančeky [Legnava Dances], and Flambovaná hudba [Flambéed Music]) that integrated elements of (frequently disturbing) performance, of instrumental and musical theatre, or of sound and graphics installations, took their inspiration from Cage’s usage of the method of incidental processes and free improvisation. “Free” in this instance meant intuitive, concentrated communication among all participants. TmC’s musical and intermedial happenings took the form of (sub)conscious interactions – for instance, reacting to Fluxus concepts as captured on randomly distributed cards; or to movement sketches in BALVAN’s style that integrated experimental poetry. The unpredictable development of event (de)compositions in the “AHA domain” leads “the line of dynamics on a path that keeps [spectators] on the alert, forcing them to watch and listen as they witness an unending sequence of changes... This resembles watching flames of fire, the flow of water or movement of clouds in the sky” (Murin). TmC was the only Slovak experimental, conceptual music ensemble to engage in transmedial dialogues with coincidence – in various performances (until 1996) in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Germany. Several of them were captured in early 1990s stylized Slovak Television documentaries Um [Mind], Podhubie – Podhudbie [Matrix – Musix], Trans Médiá [Trans Media], Patafunus, and in Murin’s documentary produced for STV, San Francisco Performance Art Festival.

Simultaneously with their activities for TmC, Adamčiak, Machajdík and Murin along with Horváth, Smetanová, Cón, Prokop and Peter Martinček initiated, in January 1990, the founding of Spoločnosť pre NEkonvenčnú Hudbu – SNEH (Society for Unconventional Music – SNOW), as a separate section of the Slovak Music Association (that had itself due to differing views become separated from the official Slovak Musicians’ Union). SNEH as an organizational platform of artists, experts, and enthusiasts of unknown, insufficiently documented, new experimental music took it upon itself to create space for “the research, support, encouragement, planning, presentation, advertising and transcending of unconventional approaches, creative and organizational activities in the AHA domain” (Adamčiak). As a consequence of unfavourable conditions in formerly socialist Slovakia, SNEH was forced to broaden the definition of unconventionality to include all ideologically “displaced” music of the 2nd half of the 20the century – any music from outside Europe, spiritual, computer, intermedial and conceptual music. Beside providing the institutional roof for TmC, SNEH began (using Machajdík’s valuable contacts) organizing first successful international festivals of unconventional music and art, such as Konvergencie [Convergencies] (1990), Festival intermediálnej tvorby FIT [Festival of Intermedial Art] (1991-1992), Bazén [Swimming Pool] (1992), and the Musicsolarium cycle (1993-1994), in addition to stand-alone concerts by notable representatives of the world’s experimental music (Richard Tietelbaum, Hugh Davies, Phill Niblock, Jon Rose, Nicolas Collins, Phil Minton and others).

After Peter Machajdík left for Berlin in 1992 (where he continued his activities as composer, becoming a member of Vitebsk Broken and “external” composer for other Slovak ensembles such as VENI, Požoň Sentimentál and the Stoka theatre), important conceptual activities by SNEH in the mid-1990s were initiated by the esthetician, curator and intermedial conceptualist Jozef Cseres (1961) from Nové Zámky, also known as HEyeRMEarS (Hermes’s Eye and Ear, see www.k2ic.sk/hermes). As an organizer, he had creatively contributed to the preparation of John Cage’s 1992 visit in Slovakia, with the Czecho-Slovak exhibition Hommage á John Cage in the foyer of the building of the Slovak Radio under the auspices of Cseres’s own Art deco mini-gallery. Cseres was instrumental in organizing numerous unconventional art events in Slovakia and abroad, and in SNEH’s publication activities first initiated by Murin (who led SNEH from 1993). 1995 was the publication year of the unique, relevant even today, anthology of source texts AVALANCHES 1990-1995 (edited by Murin), mapping white spots in the reflection of Slovak and the world’s unconventional music and intermedial culture. In the following years, the G.L.A.C.I.E.S. edition published Radio Happenings I–V by John Cage and Morton Feldman, and Slovak translations of Suzanne K. Langer’s texts On Significance in Music and The Genesis of Artistic Import.

Thanks to Cseres and Murin, Slovakia also became venue for SOUND OFF, a unique international festival of contemporary progressive music in its transmedial dimensions. The festival’s first two installments in 1995 and 1996 in Bratislava and Šamorín focused on the dialogic confrontation of differing innovative approaches as exemplified in works by Viktor Lois, Jon Rose, Otomo Yoshihide, Michael Delia, the ensembles Goz Of Kemeur and Danke, Zdeněk Plachý (former member of Dunaj and Skleněná louka), Blahoslav Rozbořil with the Morodochium ensemble, graphic artists Martin Zet, Uli Aigner, Jaroslav Drotár, Svetozár Ilavský and others (documented on the CD Sound off 1995-1996 published by SNEH in 1996).

In 1997, the third SOUND OFF’s central theme was the artistic recontextualization of damaged pianos. The generous exposition The Piano Hotel in the Šamorín synagogue, conceived by Murin (who had in the meantime joined the World Association for Ruined Piano Studies – WARPS), provided “asylum” to installations by Milan Adamčiak, Bartolomé Ferrado, Peter Kalmus, Rav Kiel, Otis Laubert and Rachel Rosenbach. The synagogue was also the venue for Bolleter’s project Left Hand of the Universe interpreted by Murin as a multimedia visual, textual, video, and musical performance. Simultaneously on 3 continents, pianists played “invalid” pianos by using only their left hands – in Central Europe, Adamčiak, Murin and Plachý; in the United States, Dan Wiencek and Stephen Scott; and in Western Australia, Nathan Crotty and Bolleter. The project took on its final form after the parallel soundtracks of all 3 concerts were combined on the eponymous CD (published in Sydney by WARPS in 1998) and on the CD-ROM Piano Hotel (SNEH, 1999).

The festival’s 4th installment in 1998 in Nové Zámky focused on the deaurization of the violin phenomenon – thanks to SNEH’s cooperation with József R. Juhász’s Štúdio erté, it took place concurrently with the 10th annual festival of perform/action art TRANSART COMMUNICATION. Among the performers were Ben Patterson, Paul Panhuysen, Phill Niblock, The Necks and modern-day violinists Kaffe Matthews, Phil Durrant, and Aleks Kolkowski. In the Slovak town of Violín, in the presence of another violin virtuoso and spiritual father of Rosenbergesque mystification, Jon Rose, festival participants laid the foundation stone of a unique institution – The Rosenberg museum (Jozef Cseres became its director).

The theme of the 5th SOUND OFF was Beams & Waves. Among its highlights, at concerts in Nitra and Nové Zámky, were the intermedial artist and laser koto player Miya Masaoka, performers Balint Szombathy, József R. Juhász, and Murin’s and Cseres’s own mixmedial conceptual tandem LENGOW & HEyeRMEarS (L&H) in the acoustic performance L&H Meet the Radio Artists from ORF Kunstradio, Vienna, Radio Free B92, Belgrade, and Tilos Rádió, Budapest (CD Sound Off 1999/2000: Beams & Waves, SNEH 2000) – It was Slovakia’s first radioart project to utilize the Internet connection. Radio art and Ars acoustic were later among the central topics of Murin’s notable theoretical research (see www.radioart.sk).

The 6th installment, again in Nitra, examined Pupanimart, or connotations of puppet art, in hybrid media projects by David Šubík and Blahoslav Rozbořil (Techno s lidskou tváří [Techno with a Human Face]), L&H with Theatro Carnevalo, tEóRia OtraSu, and Threeply wheel of fiktivity. Cseres afterwards organized the outstanding international exhibition Not So Good Music in Prague (Alternativa 2000) and Trnava (2001). The final 7th installment of SOUND OFF in 2002, titled Typewriting Aloud, Typoxxs Allowed, featuring installations and mixmedial performances by over 40 artists, was already organized by Cseres and Zsolt Sőrés (in the unfinished building of Art Gallery in Nové Zámky) under the auspices of k2ic – Kassák’s Center of Intermedial Creativity. This new (2000) group that focuses its activities primarily outside of Slovakia, may be regarded as SNEH’s successor, as SNEH after thirteen years of its existence capitulated in the face of the extremely unfavourable conditions for the survival of unconventional art in Slovakia…

As further evidence of vigorous activities by Cseres and Murin (that have still not been given enough credit in Slovakia), mention should be made of the impressive CD-ROM project by L&H with Otomo Yoshihide, Sachiko M, DJ Mao, and Peter Skala: Warholes (2003); Cseres’s key work Hudobné simulakrá [Musical Simulacra] (HF, 2002); the agile music label and publishing house founded by Cseres, HEyeRMEarS Discorbie (2002); and Murin’s polyfunctionally useful project of a graphical score, Signatúra [Signature] (2001-2004).

Julo Fujak


Selected discography:
Milan Adamčiak & Michal Murin: for the Transmusic Comp. poetics, a typical contribution was their conceptual set of 7 grinding wheels shaped like CDs, titled Encyclopedia A-L, Encyclopedia M-Z, Opera, Symphonia, Gamelan Duo, Te Deum, and Kol Nidre; SNEH 2000
Milan Adamčiak: Červený fidlikant pod strechou [Red Fiddler Under the Roof]. Sound Off 1995-1996; SNEH 1996
Milan Adamčiak: Pre obe ruky ľavé [For Both Left Hands]. Sound Off 1997: Piano Hotel, SNEH 1999; Left Hand Of Universe, WARPS Sydney 1998
Peter Machajdík: Death In 40 Pictures. Quarterly, ReR 1994
Peter Machajdík: 60 Seconds. Guido Arbonelli: Namaste Suite / Mnemes / Auralit, HCD 2003
Peter Machajdík: Soundscapes. Electroacoustic and Computer Music. Soza 2003
Michal Murin: Vertigo, Transart Communication 1995-1996; CD-ROM, Studio erté 1997
Michal Murin: Sound Off 1997: Piano hotel; SNEH 1999
Michal Murin: Piano Music. Left Hand of the Universe; WARPS Sydney 1999
Jozef Cseres: Rosart Mix. Hermovo ucho v Nitre 1999-2001; Animartis 2002
Jozef Cseres: Post-phenomenological P. F. Sound Off 2002: Typewriting Aloud, Typoxxs Allowed; HEyeRMEarS Discorbie 2003
Lengow & Heyermears: L&H Meet the Radio Artists. Sound off 1999/2000: Beams and Waves; SNEH 2000
Lengow & Heyermears: L&H Meet Theatro Carnevalo. Hermovo ucho v Nitre 1999-2001; Animartis 2002
Lengow & Heyermears, Otomo Yoshihide, Sachiko M, DJ Mao, Peter Skala: Warholes / Warhol Memory Disorder; HEyeRMEarS Discorbie 2003


This text was written as a contribution to the research and development project Civilizational and Cultural Processes in the Transforming Slovak Society, part of the comprehensive state-sponsored research and development program, Role of Social Sciences in the Development of Society.