Once more, the Laiterie district in Strasbourg was getting its festal spirit to host the new version of the Ososphère Nights on the 26th and 27th September. Divided between peregrinations in the numerous indoor spaces – concert halls, galleries, clubs – and the outdoor urban alleys of this unusual site, real piece of town divided up for the occasion, the numerous audience that came attended a 2008 edition that was celebrating digital arts in a particularly abundant ambulatory route.
Topography
The connection operated some time ago now between the Artefact association, organizing the Nuits de l’Ososphère, and different contemporary art structures like the Studio National des Arts Contemporains du Fresnoy or Transcultures, organizing the City Sonics festival, and the renewal of the implication of well known activists such as Pierre Belouin from the Optical Sound platform in the festival programme gave the opportunity to offer a quality set in terms of plastic an digital installations.
In spite of some problems with direction indicators sometimes making the route vague, and the formal transparency of a certain number of works missing a bit of substance, several creations have made the difference. Among others we will remember the proposition of the plastic artist Thierry Martin, the architect Caroline Leloup and the musician Mathias Delplanque, around their Boîte à Tubes, a room full of hanging pipes, creating sound reactions during the audience tour insidiously transforming the atmosphere of the space, while the transcription on an outside screen of the “verticalised choreographies” of the audience was offering a striking visual capitation of the moment.
Body experience
More lo-fi in the spirit but as amusing, the sound installation Trois Radios of Arno Fabre was showing three radios working intermittently depending on the different contacts established by a drop-by-drop system acting on the cut threads. A poetical sense of the unpredictable that was nevertheless giving less vertigo than the roaring video on two axes placed at 360 degrees by Cécile Babiole, 116 Rpm, caught from the Mulhouse Tour de l’Europe.
In the body experiences section, the soft sensations of the vibratory installation Delay~ by Etienne Rey, made of water, sounds and lights, were quite expected because of the wait which was very long. Long but more accessible than the strange Tibetan bowl sound shower perpetrated by the captivating Isa Belle. Impatient ones were reassured. They still had the excellent outside conceptual bar Phase 2 / Noodle Tisch, created by the EXYZT group to drown their sorrows, between musical evanescent mixes, smoke and divine smell drops, projections and real Japanese noodles soup !
Fluvial cruises
For the curious ones, not totally sated by the city programme of the Laiterie district, the Ososphère experience was having an outside extension through the presentation by the team of the Mu group of the results of the European Sound Delta project (see MCD #48). During several weeks, two barge-studios have travelled along the Rhine and the Danube to offer to different resident artists food for questioning and sampling different sound environments crossed during their journey. It is surely to perpetuate this going-with-the-flow experience that the works made were having an original presentation, through their broadcasting during short fluvial cruises, intimist and convivial at the same time.
Crowned by the live concerts of especially chosen artists, as the thrilling performance of Aki Onda opposite the European Parliament during the inauguration cruise, or the one of Rainier Lericolais sheltered in a boats warehouse; these special moments have without a doubt made some of the most beautiful instants of the festival. In corollary, a special concert was given in the fined setting of the auditorium of the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Strasbourg, bringing together in particular Phil Niblock, surely the most famous participant of the project, and Christian Zanési from the GRM.
Electronic music
We can say that the programme of the Ososphère 2008 was therefore as varied as multidisciplinary and the original and fundamental attachment of the festival to electronic music was not feeling indebted. The Puppetmastaz concert, with their furious show of hip/hop marionettes, made a nice jam in front of the Dôme room and turned out to be one of the most delightful moment of the week end, with the blunt and technoïd sets of the veteran Dave Clarke and the promising Gergor Tresher. In a more rock-orientated spirit, the old Wire, the young Australian of Pivot or the very politically incorrect Saul Willimas were expected catalysts.
Laurent Catala
Photo: © Philippe Groslier
Website : www.ososphere.org
