[spectre] Sputnik Day Portugal

[Ewen Chardronnet]

Sputnik Day Portugal : cosmo-sonic doom, orbital interceptions & mental 
astronautism 50 years after Sputnik 1
4-5-6 of October 2007 : Porto & Lisbon, Portugal
Mecanosphere & Semaphore


Mecanosphere /Semaphore : live for Sputnik Day at Auditório da Fundação 
de Serralves
Porto, 4 de Outubro (concerto) 22h
http://www.serralves.pt/actividades/detalhes.php?id=1222

Ewen Chardronnet : conference
Faculdade de Belas Artes
Porto, 4 de Outubro (conferência) 14h

Mecanosphere / Semaphore : live at Galeria ZDB
Lisboa, 5 de Outubro (concerto) 23h
http://www.zedosbois.org/zdbmuzique/index.htm

Ewen Chardronnet : conference + films program at Fábrica Braço de Prata
Lisboa 6 de Outubro (conferência) 17h


Overall Presentation : from outer-space future to inner-space loops and 
spectral remanence.

50 years after Sputnik 1 reached the geocentric orbit from its 
launchpad, we have to aknowledge that, strangely enough, the space era – 
at least in its classic characteristics – is already behind us.

The promises of a collective cosmonautism for all, as it was promoted by 
the fathers of the space era, Konstyantin Tsiolkovsky, Nikolai Fyodorov 
and the biocosmicists, was self-discarded almost at the very same moment 
of its technological faisability. Perhaps the epistemological and 
cultural rupture embodied by the happening of Sputnik 1 was not so much 
one of an access to space, but a profound reshape of time and space on 
earth : a collapsing of the coordinates of time and space onto each 
other through the manifestation of a radical yet apparently more modest 
vehicle than the spaceship : the geocentric satellite, a vehicle quietly 
hidden behind its applications, but the foremost vehicle of all, the 
inner-space intensificator, the vehicle of invisible flux of data.

Instead of taking off and furiously heading toward the outer-space where 
the now old-fashioned “historical future” was located (the 
eschatological or the theological future), the inhabitants of planet 
Earth woke up from the space Golden Age in a reversed world : a world of 
intensification of their inner-space in the context of a global gated 
landscape of motorway ramps and circulation loops, shopping centers, 
no-go zones, suburbs and parking lots glued together, mentally and 
socially, by prosthesis of a totally different kind : television, radio, 
gps, cell phones, personal computers, internet... The fleet of 
satellites are an orbital barrier and a reversed mirror of the surface 
of Earth. It creates a gated access to outer-space and acts like a 
spheric mirror. Earth itself becomes a multi-dimensional forclosed 
capsule, exponentially self-duplicating itself through its own 
transmissions, communications and surveillance. A place where reality is 
now a minor segment of its own accumulated, immaterial, electrical 
archivation. Inner-space 2 inner-space... self-transmissions in general.

In this context, Earth becomes something close to a crypt : an a-topic 
space of forclusion, where all dead things cannot die and all past 
things remains in the state of ghosts. Auto-loop and spectral remanence 
produced in real time. The critical exploration of such a space takes 
then the necessary shape of transhistory mythopoesis and psychogeography 
mapping, ghostbusting and necronautism, using the phantom vehicles of 
the ghost themselves : counter-surveillance tactics and inner-space 
escapism for the inner-city kids.


Portugal Sputnik Day : Mecanosphere & Semaphore / Ewen Chardronnet

Portugal once was the country of the navigators and cartographers who 
opened and mapped the first nautical routes. The transonic and 
trans-national group Mecanosphere teams with Ewen Chardronnet's 
infosphere monitoring project “Semaphore”, for two live performances in 
Porto and Lisbon of rough cosmo-sonic mahyem and satellite 
interceptions. Ewen Chardronnet will also give two conferences to 
present his work as intermedia artist in the specific projects 
“Association of Autonomous Astronauts” and “Spectral Investigation 
Collective”. This 3 days marathon will be concluded by a night of 
documentary movie projections.



Mecanosphere

Mecanosphere is transnational a music/word project headquartered in 
Portugal. its morphing, rotative, line up include, amongst many others, 
french drummer & caveman electronics manipulator Benjamin Brejon, 
multi-specter machinist and multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Uliel Hhy, 
polyglot portuguese vocalist Adolfo Luxuria Canibal, actor and 
mouthpiece Diogo Doria ( of Manoel de Oliveira fame) as well as a myriad 
of co-conspirators like contrabass player Henrique Fernandes or death 
metal drummer and electro-accoustic composer Gustavo Costa. In time, 
Mecanosphere has recorded and performed with such as Iggy & the Stooges 
tenor sax player Steve Mackay and are currently finishing their upcoming 
album with british vocalist Mark Stewart ( the maffia / On-U-sound).
Mecanosphere is a rough transonic and transgenetic machinery operating, 
on stage, with two drumkits, electric percussions, electric contrabass, 
old school electronic circuits and voices. Its music and performances 
recycle ruins of hip hop, spectral dub, violent chaos rock, briccolage 
electronica, collage art and free jazz blasts, with dystopic visions and 
cut ups from sci-fi novels to Khlebnikov, atmospherical reports to 
Samuel Butler and RKA or Nasa communications.
Mecanosphere so far has released three albums : mecanosphere ( 2003), 
bailarina ( 2005) and limb shop ( 2006). their upcoming record, 
"membrane" will be out in 2008.
http://www.myspace.com/mecanosphere1
http://www.soopa.org

Semaphore / Ewen Chardronnet

Ewen Chardronnet is an intermedia artist and independant author who 
works and lives in Tours, France. His work investigate the social, 
cultural and environmental consequences of the usage of technologies. As 
a real-time visual and sound performer he has been collaborating with 
several projects, such as “XKV8”, “Signal Sever!”, “Semaphore”, “Radiant 
Heat” and the just released “Planetarium” concert DVD (Lowave, 2007) for 
electro-blues musicians Rodolphe Burger and Yves Dormoy. He's the 
project manager for the curatorial or experimental programs of the Tours 
based e-ngo Ellipse, wich contributes to different initiatives such as 
Makrolab, MIR (zero-g flight in Star City, Russia), Acoustic Space Lab, 
World-Information.Org, Spectral Investigations Collective, The 
Laboratory Planet. Widely published, he's working now on a new book on 
dissemination and the future of war dissuasion in the rise of convergent 
technologies. He has published "Quitter la Gravité" (Leaving Gravity), 
an anthology on the Association of Autonomous Astronauts (AAA, 2001, 
Quitter la Gravité. Paris, France, Editions de L'Eclat) and has received 
in 2003 the Leonardo New Horizons Award together with the Acoustic Space 
Lab network.

http://www.myownspace.fr/484
http://semaphore.blogs.com
http://e-ngo.org