Concert:
Augustin Maurs
SYNCOPATIONS

with Diego Andrés Moscoso and Constantin Engelmann

(voice-s, percussions, electronically generated sounds, and other ghost instruments)

25 May 24, 8 pm

In English

Venue: 4th floor

Registration via reservation@kw-berlin.de

Repeated 40 minutes cycles starting approximately at 8 pm, 8.40 pm, and 9.20 pm.

“Syncope, an absence of the self. A ‘cerebral eclipse’, so similar to death that it is also called ‘apparent death’.”

Catherine Clément, Syncope: The Philosophy of Rapture

The term syncope comes from Latin syncopare as “to contract a word by omission of middle sounds” but also “to faint away”, “to swoon”, from Greek synkoptein “to cut up”. Among musicians, syncopation is known as a missing main beat causing a shift in rhythmic accent. 
1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2 becomes …2,… 2,….2, … a sudden interruption with the potential to overtake itself, syncopation has the ability of bouncing on what has been taken away.

This interplay between voice-s, electronically generated sounds, percussions and other “ghost instruments” explores syncopation as a rhythmic pattern and as a music-historical leitmotif, but also as a state of being and as a political allegory. Throughout a repeated cycle of different “musical time zones”, it also questions how the term was used, perceived and assigned to specific musical features, many of which of non-western origin.

The evening traces the echoes of different syncopated motifs; bits of languages, bits of sounds, middles taken away leading to historical, geographic and semantic gaps. “No”, “now” and “own” mingle strangely, the history of clapping hands meets the history of applause, and a voice breaks into an impossible song. These often generative, yet collapsing musical processes also form the basis of an introspective inquiry. What has happened to us? Syncopation may appear as a possibility to outline what is missing, to take it by both ends, and eventually to overcome it by performing it. It triggers the ecstatic, bodily consciousness of music making as a way to silence the world, calling for renouncement for the sake of continuity.

Augustin Maurs’ “musical interplays” combine performance, interpretation and composition strategies. Emphasizing on the very act of music making, they often challenge western musical archetypes and conventions. They are processes started, so far never ended, taking different forms, adapting to different contexts and exploring relationships between sound, histories and bodies.

Born in Chile, Diego Andrés Moscoso studied anthropology, sociology and contemporary drawing in Belgium. In parallel to his studies, he researched and studied Middle Eastern percussions. He plays with his band Phoenician Drive among other ensembles and he is involved in multiple projects between music and contemporary dance.

Constantin Engelmann is an artist and works in the fields of stage, performance, experimental sound design and kinetic sculpture. In his work, he is interested in the distortion of sensory perception within time and the immediate experience of sound. He holds a diploma and Meisterschüler in generative art from the UdK Berlin. Together with Till Bovermann, he founded plonk.studio, in which experimental sound applications are developed and researched.