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Mattin - Seize the Means of Complexity
LP on Xing (XONG collection XX09) out December 2023, order at https://www.soundohm.com/product/seize-the-means-of-comple and at https://www.lespressesdureel.com/EN/ouvrage.php?id=11857&menu=2
Collector's edition available at https://www.soundohm.com/product/seize-the-means-of-comple-1 and at https://shop.flash---art.it/products/mattin-seize-the-means-of-complexity
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Xing presents the LP Seize the Means of Complexity by Mattin, ninth release of XONG collection - artist records. The release is on white vinyl in a limited numbered edition of 150 copies. The collector's edition consists of 20 copies, each accompanied by a different polaroid portraying fragments from the social media universe.
Seize the Means of Complexity is a call for all social media users of the world to unite: "We are in the asshole of history. Broken individuals struggling with mental health, media obsession, need for attention and legitimation. Burning souls searching for validation, suffering from imposter syndrome in a post-Netflix wasteland. From the ruins of our subjectivity, something can be built; something must be built. To seize the means of complexity, we must comprehend the tools of algorithmic subsumption, and leverage that knowledge to steer their development towards an open-source conception of subjectivity. We should all have access to the codes, technologies, models, and complexities that shape our lives. By embracing noise rather than shying away from it, this adaptive open-source subject could pave the way for a future transcending capitalist realism and its end of history, forging a new form of communism fit for the 21st century."
Seize the Means of Complexity is the recomposition of some materials Mattin used in his interactive performances over the last year: a mass of musical fragments that crystallise as a call for mobilisation.
As the title of the album advises, or rather states: to not be crushed by the symptoms that social media produces on us, we must seize the opportunity opened up by the internet in its widest complexity. How can we collectivize the psychosomatic consequences produced by the Meganets? How can we reverse-engineer social media? This new record by Mattin commissioned for Xong collection contains recordings from TikTok and Instagram (hits, pop songs, advertising and voice) that can be heard as a a chorus of fragments from the multitude addressing psychic destabilization and the horizon of paranoia and alienation. This plunderphonia of sounds transmitted by the global media opens the possibility of addressing what it means to be human beyond the liberal individual. Seize the Means of Complexity is a proposition, a sonic stage for something to happen.
Xong is the name of the collection produced by Xing, a vinyl-only record label of works by both Italian and international personalities linked to the variegated worlds of live performativity. The collection explores a geography of artists who present this sonic field as a platform to expand their staged worlds. "The space of the record" is given focus and amplifies their poetics as both a sonic and physical phenomenon. Xong is a unique project that draws out divergent understandings of the performative and live arts, beyond genre and intersecting between different practices. Xong collects a series of original creations that constitute an expanded program. Each physical record is a numbered edition on white vinyl hosting the solidification of the gesture. A wave upon wave, a series of "Music-Non-Music" to actualize both the artists' and listeners' imagination.
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Realised by Mattin at Abject Musik Studio, 2022, Mastered by Rashad Becker, Clunk Studio, Cover by Mattin, Artwork Xing, Printed by handle with care Berlin, Format vinyl (white), Cat.n° XONG collection XX09 (2023), Label Xing, Anti-Copyright
- Genre
- experimental