Opus17aSlimeVariation#11 is part of the ongoing series of reinterpretations that Roc Jiménez de Cisneros and Stephen Sharp have played and recorded taking German artist Hanne Darboven’s Opus 17a as a starting point. In 2014, 30 years after Darboven’s piece was written, they collaborated with the British artist and programmer Guy Birkin to crack and transcribe the score (hundreds of pages long, written in the form of mathematical poems), in order to use it and abuse it in their own way. Since then, they have produced a number of versions of the piece – for drum machine, for computer, for carillon, for laser and UV paint – extending their mutant techno aesthetics, while at the same time paying tribute to Darboven’s maddening score.
“The works of Hanne Darboven work like a mountain: the top can’t be seen from the bottom, the base disappears from the summit, the whole escapes the climber as the pilot misses the point, it stands as metaphor for something that exists metonymically, exists as a surplus of the Real with an excess of the Symbolic, and is both of the moment and continuously monumental.” – Vanessa Place, X-TRA
Roc Jiménez de Cisneros – on his own and working alongside Stephen Sharp as EVOL – makes computer music for hooligans and deconstructed rave objects. Evol’s music has been released by Entr’acte, Editions Mego, Presto!?, fals.ch and their own label ALKU, and showcased at festivals, clubs, galleries and museums around the world. Evol recordings, installations and performances have a unique approach to sound matter, full of upward spirals, trance-inducing patterns and challenging temporal structures.
