track listing:
01. Moby_
Mulholland
02. Kaliber_a1
03. Claude Von Stroke_Who's afraid of Detroit
04. John Tejada_The end of it all
05. Nhar_Silkcut
06. Wighnommy Brothers_Moppalkiff
07. Gui.tar_Friday only
08. Gabriel Ananda & Cio D'or_Lauschgoldengel
09. Tekel & Tim Parris_Marketim
10. Douglas Greed_Let's roll
11. Markese_Oregano
12. Steadycam_knock-kneed
Almost 6 months following the release of Sounds of Instruments 01 which was edited by Hiroshi Watanabe, Klik Records returns with the presentation of the series' second instalment. This time, the special guest arrives from Cologne and Kompakt's family, Navid Tahernia. As one of the major players, since 1989, in the early Frankfurt scene (namely his Close residency from 1994 - plus his labels Cellophan, In Front music and Linear), Navid has recorded for Harthouse, Rising High and Planet Source. Over the years he has Dj-ed across Germany and around the world -from Berlin's Tresor to the mega-raves of Timewarp and Loveparade. Now as a part of the Kompakt family, he is set to make his return to the international circuit. His years of experience bring a wealth of musical knowledge into his record crate that could be described as a seamless blend of atmospheric, minimal techno.
On Sounds of Instruments 02, Navid delivers an amazing mix with minimal, techno as well as electro elements, while some exceptional collaborations by some of the most respected labels and artists are featured, such as Moby, Wighnomy Brothers, John Tejada, Cio d'or, to name a few.
Sounds Of Instruments 02, is also accompanied by a DVD that includes a film by Panayiotis Hadjistefanou.
DVD storybord by Panagiotis Hadjistefanou
This is a DVD containing a film, a book, movie costumes, an improvised performance by Angela Brouskou (one of Greece's most respected actresses), digital animation, graphics, text and stills by nanogod, along with sampled real live TV, screen collages and landscapes - both manufactured and "real".
All these disparate elements, a sort of multilayered visual mix if you like, is thrown, quite randomly, within the confines of your average televisual lay out. It is a video scrapbook illustrating all the things you're about to read.
This is a collaboration between people that have never actually met each other. The components are various, and all are available thanks to the fusion of advanced technology, human creativity and communication. It is also an exercise to determine how far these components can be stretched to the limits of their meaning, to see how far randomness can lead us - at least across a screen.
I've called it "A haunted afternoon with Angela", in honour of the main star, Angela Brouskou, who performs for my camera, wearing specially designed costumes. This performance is based on an excerpt from the pages of my first novel - Eponymi (Celebrity, nanogod editions, Athens November 2004). This experimental novel was written to save myself from losing my mind, while "working" as an art director at a wretched TV ad production company. During that time, my "serious" art career (as nanogod) was in a coma caused by too many unpaid contributions to "digital arts and new media festivals" (and little or no interest from galleries and collectors).
It was a creative time though. I spent all my free time experimenting with friends - that's how the main video came to be, with Angela Brouskou trying costumes I designed for her adaptation of "Waiting for Godot" by Samuel Beckett.
The text she is reading is passages from "Eponymi". I believed the book, then still unpublished, would imbue the costume fitting with the proper mix of macabre, delusional elegance and uncomfortable sentiments. Beckett's existential cri de Coeur clashed beautifully with my Christian Berard-inspired gothic couture, and at least to my eyes, the video of the fittings is priceless in its haunting beauty.
This odd mix of wordy sadism as inverse sentimentality, was never meant to be published. In my most delusional states I fantasized about awards ceremonies recognizing me as a literary genius. Then I thought of Jorge Luis Borges and remembered what real literature is, which only furthered my despair at the never ending daytime meetings with nightmarishly polite clients and their hopelessly uninspiring product.
Things changed when I was eventually fired from my day job, and I had to accept an offer as an "image maker" in a reality show / talent contest called Fame Story on real live mainstream Greek TV. Was life imitating art?
What happened next is hard to believe, as only the truth can be. Trying to reconcile my artistic aspirations with my need for this job, which was to be televised across the nation on primetime TV, I decided to create my own public image, hi-jacking the very same TV show that had hired me to create the image of the aspiring pop stars/competitors. This was an extreme decision on my part, to say the least, especially as an outsider artist living in a country that only tolerates conformity to the most rigid Christian and family values.
I decided to do to what I really wanted: to use television for the purposes of art. Not in the purposes of old, boring video art - but a forum for disseminating messages usually marginalised within the walls of institutions and otherwise. I threw confrontational contemporary art right in the face of the most mainstream television public in the most conservative country of the E.U.
After that, I never hid my explosive personality. I often behaved like a mix of Madonna while dressed as Jeffrey Dahmer. I confused and opened the minds of my students, teaching them the wonders of Ramelzee, Sun Ra and Leigh Bowery, Gordon Matta Clark and Richard Avedon.
A few days before the 4th Sunday talent show prime time special, the TV producers started seriously warning me that I would get fired for my extreme behaviour (and "lefty" opinions). Instead of "behaving properly and doing my job", I decided to follow Bukowski's dictum: "if it's worth trying, it's worth going all the way."
That night - that final night of my career as an image maker - I was supposed to judge the participants, as a member of the Fame Story "music" "Academy". I arrived in full costume, outlandishly mixing Osama Bin Laden, Star Wars and madness in doses so extreme that even I could not look at myself in the mirror. Of course, when a fellow judge dared to confront me I showered her with a torrent of expletives so violent that the clips of my fit are still being replayed on Greek national television, more than 2 years later.
It only took 4 television appearances to become a household name. For the following months I was on the receiving end of congratulations coming from artists as disparate as Miltos Manetas and Hussein Chalayan. I am still approached and congratulated by countless of "everyday people" on the street.
Suddenly, it seemed, I had embodied the zeitgeist, as only a half mad artist can. I was called a genius and started to become regularly satirized on national TV by famous comedians. I started writing a weekly column in the most popular Sunday Greek newspaper. My often super-extreme writing has never been censored, which was not the case in the past, even when I was the Editor in Chief of Vogue Çellas, in a previous life as a successful editorial drone.
Post-reality show, I was exposed to what people really thought about me, which come to think of it, is invaluable. As expected, I didn't only have fans. My detractors were many - countless accusations came flying at my face: "insane", "celebrity trash", "degenerate", "delinquent", "megalomaniac", "manic depressive", "raving digital prostitute", "dangerous for children", "mad", "faggot" are only a few. I was told repeatedly to leave the country, received death threats, and told I would get a serious beating. Whatever - "see if my cunt gives a shit".
As an artist, my triumph is that I made an impact in the popular imagination without any sort of compromise. I was fully aware that my behaviour was to be labelled as pathological by those that feel threatened by freedom of expression and difference of opinion.
Having caused a huge national scandal, I've since become a regular guest on talk shows all over Greek TV. Absolutely nothing has changed concerning my sad financial and/or social state. My everyday problems remain, but I am amused by my identity as a uniquely 21ST century thing - a "serious and difficult" artist that became a household name through a reality show. For others, I am a survivor, having attacked from within the very system that supposedly ensures that people like me "behave and do their jobs".
So maybe there is hope after all. Maybe you should really say whatever you want, and damn the consequences. Wear the wrong thing, express that unpopular opinion, get fired, follow your dreams, be yourself. You'll discover that a bit of TV scandal can get a message across to the public, and do so with such immediacy and speed, that no book can compete.
The moral of this story, at least for me, is that television has social, artistic and ideological potential. It is convenient for those who wish to abuse power to perpetuate the myth of television as a morally and artistically bankrupt medium. Why do we tolerate a television that is fatalistically surrendered to the nightmarish worldview of demagogues, fanatics and ruthless marketeering?
Television, as any other culturally important medium, can carry any message, both civilized and not. It's a power that can be used for good, and that precludes neither aesthetics, ethics nor sophistication. If nothing else, this film is my proposal for the Free Television movement. More importantly, it's proof that a different world is possible, even on our TV screens. We just have to go all the way, as long as we remember that, unlike any other utopia, Free TV has no manifesto.
I hope I have inspired you. Even if you hated the film, I am sure that what you've seen and read so far will forever change the way you thought about television.
Yours truly,
nanogod
This film is dedicated 2 Naveen.
Shouts + Thanks 2: Dakis Joannou, Spilioti Projects, Nektarios @ vinyl microstore, George Kyriakou @ Klik records, Angela Brouskou, John Gotsis, Mediamatic Offline and all the sites that permit free video downloads!
