Artist Profile

10
BASED IN Melbourne, Australia ARTFORM Non Concert

WHY

Those who find everything beautiful are now in danger of finding nothing beautiful.—Theodor Adorno

The term ‘concert’ means to be ‘in agreement, accord, harmony’. So, a performance based on disagreement, discord, and noise could be understood as—what Basque artist Mattin terms—a ‘non-concert’. At a recent Bum Creek non-concert, songs were aborted midstream, band members bickered, they taunted and glared at each other, and they stared unnervingly at the audience. Sounds happened: preset synthesiser tones, coughing, breaking glass. One thought, ‘That isn’t music, that is just a man’s finger pressing a key.’ Under-performed yet over-staged, Bum Creek play out their dance between the grand and pathetic.

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About

Sam Karmel, Tarquin Manek, and Trevelyan Clay are Bum Creek, a band from Melbourne. Their meta-performances address our expectations of performance. Bum Creek knowingly satirise ‘free’ improvisation, lampooning the conventions of an art form that sees itself as unconventional. They challenge the assumption that improvisers engage with one another in a hermetic bubble while a passive audience listens on. For their performance for OtherFilm Festival 2012, Bum Creek members will wear GoPro cameras—reputedly acquired from a post-Olympics London garage sale—on their heads.