Interzone report of July 2004

French version

Previous report of June

For the new comers: The reports of Interzone contain the monthly activities of the members of the group in different domains. As we are about 300 people in the world, all different, the whole might appear at first sight as an incongruous medley. For more information on the subjects developped here, please refer to the previous reports since 1997 in the page Information on Interzone

 

Images of the day / Images du jour / Imagenes del dia:

De Argentina : Daniel Gualda

From US Culturegrounds.org

Thoughts of the day Pensées du jour:

Littlemute (US)

Grazulis blogspot (U K)

 

Hi all,

A big change here : I am stopping my job of independant psychotherapist to work in psychiatry in the closest hospital, which is much comfortable financially. So I am stopping the enterprise, but the activities of the Academy 23 can go on in another frame, to adapt according to the needs.

Very rich activity in the Zone this summer in arts and culture :

Events:

- Ramuntcho publishes a new book: DéLaDoALE 20mg MAAT (Music Art And Technologies) (2004)

- Expo : Galerie Anne Barrault : 9 septembre - 5 octobre 2004 http://annebarrault.free.fr/ramuntcho_matta/expo_fr.html

- Ramuntcho Matta and Régis Debray : "Clin d'Oeil": Marjory, un tableau de Matta Retranscription of the program on France Culture on June 19th 2004 . http://www.geocities.com/clemsnide23/ramuntcho2.html

- at/au ARS ELECTRONICA 2004 FESTIVAL, Linz : The 4th and the 5th of September 2004, Ricardo Mbarak will be in Linz (Austria) to participate to the Workshop on the Creation of Art, Design and Technology Master Classes in the Arab States. This workshop is programmed by the UNESCO in the frame of the ARS ELECRONICA 2004 FESTIVAL.
LINK UNESCO: http://portal.unesco.org/culture/fr/ev.php-URL_ID=21948&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

- This weekend you can find the new DVD of Ricardo Mbarak in the " New Releases " section at all Virgin Megastores in Lebanon.

 

Tattoo done by Theo Mindell at Spider Murphy's in San Rafael, CA

 

Interzone music:

I want to remake the page on musicians http://www.inter-zone.org/music.html as the URL of which are obsolete. It was made some years ago, and many changes have happenned since. The links on the MP3 sites are not valid anymore

Pierre Belouin and I have had an exchange on music distribution, and it comes out that in France, independant self producers hardly make it as far as distribution is concerned. The main reasons are that the media who promote music want things to make money or which are fashionable, and they do not take risk. The other reason probably is that musicians work just for themselves, in France at least.

Now the question is : how is it out of France ? In US , UK ?

Since the start of Interzone, we now can make an evaluation at the scale of a number of countries, and according to the different formulas which have been tried. Some musicians may also be better businessmen than others.

Whatever, the business system is such as it makes it hard for independant musicians to succeed. Starting from that, it's important to see where the tricks are, so to put up something on bases which escape those tricks.

Concerning the two compilations realized in the frame of the Zone, the common work did not make any problem : so organization and work done here was definitely great. Concerning the formulas : the Interzone compilation was not made for sale : Paul Sinclair gathered the songs the musicians sent on a CD and made as many copies as there were musicians, so everybody could get one and do what he wanted with it. Paul also put the songs on the net in MP3 files, butr the URL is not accessible anymore. So I am going to make a site and put them on it.
 The compilation Music for Dreamachine, gathered by Pierre, was recorded in studio, and led to the creation of the label Optical Sound. Pierre did not make money from it, could hardly get his money back.
From those two first experiments, here are the points which I can state :
1 The first thing is that when we want to make something together at the scale of the Zone, there is no problem as far as making is concerned. The work is well coordinated and it works.
2 Second point : when we make it starting from our respective means without spending money, it reveals itself much easier and simple that with money and what goes with it.
3. The internationality of the group is important : we can compair the situation in different countries, and then choose the place where it is the easiest to make. Also, an international group is not bound by the mental barriers and patterns existing in each countries, so it is much richer and free minded.
4. Since 7 years, the different groups have changed, their music as well. A lot has been done, considered as a whole. We might make an international label gathering the ones already created, which would allow to distribute in different countries. The CD "The Last Words of Hassan Sabbah" can be distributed in many places,due to the number of translations.
About the CD to come, there is "The Last Words of Hassan Sabbah" : most of the song are ready, some translations do not have any music yet. I am going to make an attempt with the French and Arabic ones and see.what comes out of it.

Conclusion : if musicians are interested , we can put up something at the scale of the Zone : gather their suggestions, ideas, proposals, etc... We can use the yahoo group Academie23 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/academie23/ which has nothing in it yet.

New pages on line:

In Interzone sites :

In the other Zoners' sites/

This report is on line at http://www.interpc.fr/mapage/westernlands/reportjuly04.html . The French version will be on line in some days at http://www.interpc.fr/mapage/westernlands/reportjuly04fr.html

All the best for August (hot here at the moment).

Izzy

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