Cellule d'Intervention METAMKINE
La Cellule d'Intervention METAMKINE is an open-ended group including musicians and filmmakers researching the relationship between image and sound. Since 1987 different concepts have been carried out and performed in festivals, galleries, cinemas and contemporary art spaces, in France, Europe, Canada, USA. Since 1995 they have developed collaborations with other groups or artists like Nachtluft (Switzerland), Kinobits (France), Loophole Cinema (England), Le Cube (France), la Flibuste (France), Voice Crack (Switzerland).
Through the magic of mirrors, multiple projectors and highly ingenious live on stage editing, Metamkine produces and directs a new film with each of their performances. Working around a core narrative, they spill eddies of impromptu vignettes, accompanied by a live soundtrack of tape fragments and ancient synthesiser sounds. These, three collaborators, who have worked together for ten years, have succeeded in pushing the boundaries of film and soundtrack into the realm of live performance - Utterly unique.
Jérôme NOETINGER, dispositif électroacoustique.
Christophe AUGER, projectors 16mm.
Xavier QUÉREL, projectors 16mm.
"Take a census of the autodidacts and we would certainly discover that their ranks are rife with musicians. Outside of the classical milieu their numbers count even among the well-known innovators (like Ornette Coleman and Jimi Hendrix). And if the early punk movement of the late 70's didn't make a lasting impression on you, it at least proved one of it's most important points. You don't have to be a virtuoso to make music. That is, you don't have to be a virtuoso to make effective music, music with impact.
By their own definition Metamkine call itself "une cellule d'intervention". Two of the three members' biographies note : formation autodidacte. Their performances have a visceral impact that does not bypass the brain. Their materials are film and sound. But they don't disagree when you notice that they resemble a band : They perform on stage, facing the audience, they have instruments which they "play" and they interact with each other through these instruments: they rehearse pieces, they improvise ; they use rhythm, orchestration ; they have played in rock clubs, jazz festivals, concert halls, they collaborate from time to time with other musicians.
But since they don't play "normal" musical instruments it's all the more irrelevant to wonder about questions like virtuosity.
Even so, when you see them live it's quite clear that they know exactly what they are doing. Based in Grenoble, Metamkine is a trio founded in 1987, compromised of two cineastes and one musician. Christophe Auger and Xavier Quérel wield super8 and 16mm projectors pointed in the direction of the audience where the image bounce off of two or more large mirrors to arrive on the screen at the back of the stage. The sound comes from Jérôme Noetinger's analog synthesizers, tape loops and amplified objects.
In their own words, "the work is not theoretical. It's completly empirical. One of us offers the sound, the others the images. The important moment is the confrontation on stage." Metamkine offers us the rare experience of music liberated from servitude to cinema, and a live cinema projected like music itself, the projectionists enjoying the spontaneity of an instrumentalist. A highly articulate improvisationnal spirit serves tighly rehearsed compositions and the empathy onstage is pointed as often at the subversion of expectations as in the affirmation and joy of collective music-making. Of course, they do belong to the tradition of experimental cinema, a tradition that Metamkine has deepended by acting like a band."
Tom Cora for Klangspuren Festival, Schwaz (Austria), September 1996.
"But it is Noetinger's work with the pioneering multimedia performance group, Cellule d'Intervention Metamkine, that best exemplifies his capacity to fuse highly disparate art forms. Their work ethic is a far cry from the trendly multi-art events that are currently mushrooming in the capitals of Europe.
"In multimedia events", he says, "you've got images and sound alongside one another, but there's no real relationship between them. Our work, on the other hand, is an interactive process : the music and images are created simultaneously, and if you were to listen to the music on its own, there would be something missing."
A Metamkine performance is a concentrated and intense affair : equipped with the barest essentials, a mixing desk, two Revox magnetic tape recorders and a couple of korg synthetizers, Noetinger improvises disparate electroacoustic sounds that mirror the dreamlike, evocative film images produced by his two associates, Xavier Quérel and Christophe Auger. Their work methods are as crudely effective as those of Noetinger : they apply chemicals to their films on stage, play around with the film speed or with colour filters and place prisms in front of their projectors. "All three of us are on stage just like a group of musicians", comments Noetinger. "The projectors are like instruments and each of us reacts to what the others are doing."
Metamkine's performances have aroused interest in musicians of all stripes. The group have collaborated with the free electroacoustic improvisation trio Nachluft as well as New York cellist Tom Cora, and they are currently envisaging projects with a number of the new generation of post-rock groups. Yet despite their predilection for analogue equipment and lo-fi working methods, they are not averse to collaborating with musicians who give precedence to computer technology. Together with the remarkable Korean musician Lê Quan Ninh on computer and percussion, Camel Zekri on computer and guitar, the Japanese instrument builder Atau Tanaka on the BioMuse and another musician using digital equipment, Metamkine recently staged a series of improvised performances at various locations throughout France under the name Kinobits, which showed just how fruitful and far-reaching such an association can be. The performances were an inspiring and frequently chaotic mix of acoustic, electronic and electroacoustic elements, an aural and visual celebration that even included some live sampling - of the group itself - by Noetinger, demonstrating that analogue and digital techniques can be complementary. As Noetinger puts it : "we have to move beyond this opposition between analogue and digital. The important thing is the music, not where it's coming from."
Rahma Khazam, The Wire 157, Mars 1997