A colaboration with BMB con
‘Body Building’
There has been a long exchange of ideas between Staalplaat Soundsystem and the performance group BMB con., As both groups work with sound, Live image, kinetic elements and spatial representations. But this collaboration arose from their shared fascination for investigating the relationship between space, performer and audience. Their method is at first sight very different; the Staalplaat Soundsystem idea is a combination of installations, live sampling, collage and recycling, combined with static and mechanical organs. While BMB con. promotes the unique moment , through performance, improvisation and physical actions. The project, ‘Body Building’ is their first real physical collaboration that together engage the various processes. The difference in process should lead to fertilization, with a result that can bridge the gap between improvisation and performance on the one hand and installation and sound collage & sampling other.
The archive is a ideal space for this project. She is the seed for Body Building. This space is the unifying factor, which has an organic shape by its ancient architecture of stairs, and cabinets , it requires to be transformed into a living organism. A large bodymachine, a complex with a delicate and mechanically sound and image system. That will be the core of the body’s nervous system . Here the fertilization must take place.
Sound, image and action will act as abstract and figurative levels of bodily movement. metabolism, reflexes, but also the emotions, thoughts and memories. Staalplaat Soundsystem static, existing materials will function as memories and preconditioning coloring the reality. The public sees, hears and recognizes its surroundings but is emotionally biased through live sampling. Whereby a combination arises from recognition, confusion, deception and surprise, BMB con. will be the bodies, the movement … etc.
The performers of BMB con. & Staalplaat Soundsystem plus the audience are themselves parts of the body. The senses; sense-sound-light, pumping the flow of people in the circulation of the building and bring it back to life. The organs consist of machines that allow for interaction with the performers. The performers and audiences are forced into motion by the relocating the action in the building or by the mechanism of the “body” itself, the visitor is consuming but not consumed. The performance is characterized by a constant changing interaction between the building, the performers and the audience.
Geert-Jan Hobijn – Staalplaat Soundsystem