Territories :: Dialects is a multifaceted research cluster conducted by the ‘Electronic Chamber Music’, a Helsinki-based live electronic quartet. It extends the scope of expression and investigation of a music ensemble to ‘non-native territories’, such as installation art, corporeal work informed by the performing arts, as well as writing. The key process is to enlarge the field of action while retaining the ensemble form, researching the outer limits of our native territory as musicians. While retaining our core activity as a music group, we wish to collectively engage in a research process using, for instance, somatic techniques, sculptural and spatial approaches, conceptual framing as well as language-based processes. We wish to create a dialogue between our ‘native’ practice with the exploratory work, as well as interact with the other cells present at the Research Pavilion.
The background argument is that artistic research is recharged through a transdisciplinary component. As the research extends the ensemble’s scope from music to a larger frame of expression, to other territories, layers of analysis, translation and communication are built upon the native craft of music-making. In this way, the inner dynamics of a specialist ensemble can become apparent and tangible to other artforms as common dialects to be shared, discussed and reformulated.
Cell initiator: Otso Lähdeoja, Uniarts Helsinki, Finland.
