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CENT ANS de SOLITUDE & FLINT GLASS (F, cinema concert)
Sprengbagger 1010: Carl-Ludwig Achaz-Duisberg (1929)
Synopsis: Germany, 1929 – After developing the plans for a huge excavator for his coal mining company, the engineer Karl Hartmann yearns for the fresh air far from his smog-filled industrial world. He returns to the village of his childhood going back to his roots in the countryside, participating in rural life, working in his grand-mother’s mill and enjoying his free time with Camilla, the pretty girl from the nearby castle. However, his assistant, Olga Lossen, discovering the plans for his machine and recognising their importance, asks the board of directors to bring Hartmann back in order to build it. The engineer is torn apart by the two women and the two conflicting ways of life. At the very moment he has to make a choice, he discovers that the village was built on a giant coal mine. This revelation seals the fate of the whole community. The giant machine, like an apocalyptic creature begins its deadly task, swallowing up the very ground, destroying the natural environment and the castle, tearing people away from their collapsing homes and bringing death and ruin into the midst of what ought to have been an Eden.
Cent Ans de Solitude and Flint Glass offer a musical interpretation of the conflicts arising throughout the movie. The live performance consists of a mixture of their own unique approach to sounds, made up of electronic layers and including acoustic elements deriving from objects being transformed from their original functions, such as scratching metal, hitting stone or bending springs. These sounds mimic the devastating effects of the monstrous machine and the industrial world it comes from. This cinema concert immerses the viewer into a dense musical environment, backed by the melodic electronic lines which echo the cold and brutal sounds of metal.
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Representatives of different generations of the industrial scene: Flint Glass alias Gwenn Trémorin and Cent Ans De Solitude aka Jean-Yves Millet – together in one special audiovisual plan. Jean Yves, active since the middle 80s, a representative of oldschool industrial – a musician, constructor of his own instruments, plus fluent in today's advanced technology and sounds, from IDM to rhythmic noise, digital drum’n’bass up to electronic ambient - Flint Glass. The French sound artists decided to work on a relatively unknown silent film Sprengbagger 1010 byCarl-Ludwig Achaz Duisberg from 1929.
The basis of it is exposing a dychotomy between nature and culture/ civilisation which is universal in history of culture. A fronde, between the Arcadia of life in harmony with nature, and a boundless strive for progress, up to extreme exploitation od human capacity. The industrial artists serve a musical interpretation of the conflict which is a central part of the film. Sprengbagger 1010 was recognized as a work of art ahead of its time. Live performance of Cent Ans De Solitude vs. Flint Glass will be a blend of their original music concepts and a different approach to material. Brutal striking of metal against metal will reflect a civilizational nightmare. We can predict the use of found objects, stone, metal, wires, springs – combined and counterpointed by catchy electronic lines. Nature vs. Man. We should be prepared for audiovisual streaming of XX - century opposition. (WS)