Isolated Field Recording Series: Bergsonist - D'un fragment à l'autre




Wednesday, May 6th at 8pm EST, ISSUE is pleased to present D'un fragment à l'autre, a new project from multidisciplinary artist and musician Bergsonist. Translating to “from one fragment to another,” D'un fragment à l'autre is a sonic retrospective of “exhumed” fragments from the artist’s published body of work and a collaboration with multimedia artist and longtime visual collaborator Greg Zifcak. The recording is part of the Isolated Field Recording Series, commissioning artists to produce field recordings to be streamed over the course of this challenging and isolated time.

A note from Bergsonist on D'un fragment à l'autre

“I've always been working with fragments, whether in design or music. This context always brings meaning to the fragments that create a piece. This live composition will delve into my endless archive of hours of sonic exploration. Before making any songs, I always tend to just experiment and record drafts. The drafts are essential in the assembling of the final piece. Working in fragments is important as it allows you to change the scale of perception and further understand our medium. To go macro scale, composing a sonic piece, you need to a priori go micro and pay attention to details.

This pandemic has been pushing me to think more about the lost bits that I use to build my work. Listening to these will allow me to move on.”

Read “Elaborate Intuition,” an interview between Bergsonist & Greg Zifcak discussing their collaborative process on BOMB Magazine.

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Selwa Abd, also known as Bergsonist, is a New York-based multidisciplinary artist and musician originally from Morocco. She is the founder of Bizaarbazaar, a music platform & publication featuring podcasts and interviews by worldwide musicians and DJs. Under the guise of Bergsonist (derived from Deleuze's Bergsonism), she uses a variety of media to investigate social resonance through divergent conceptual aesthetics (minimalism, music concrete to name a few). Through her work, she explores notions of identity, memory, and social politics. She is represented by Discwoman and hosts a monthly show on NTS radio. She also curates other projects such as the NYC based resource platform Pick Up The Flow with Stephen Decker and the collective 3afak with Sanna Almajedi. Her most recent body of work is the sonic autobiography “Middle Ouest,” a full length album released via Optimo Music. More can be found in this article.

Greg Zifcak is a musician and artist whose work crosses boundaries between club music, video processing, and stroboscopic light manipulation, often combining and conflating these media using custom-built hardware.

Recorded live 6 May 2020