Support the Instants Chavirés, sign the online petition.

Suspended Instants

On Thursday July 2nd 2009 we were shocked to learn that the balance of the operational subsidy allocated to our Association by the General Council of the Seine-Saint-Denis Department had been slashed by no less than 25,000€ – a drop of more of 19%. This in addition to a 7,000€ cut in our municipal subsidy (at the beginning of the year, the town of Montreuil had announced a reduction of 15,000€, 7000€ being the amount eventually decided upon by the end of June). This means that we have lost 32,000€ in 2009.

The lack of funding has forced us to cancel our Autumn season of concerts, video projections and exhibitions, in its entirety. Even maintaining a strict minimum of programmed events would lead to a budgetary deficit that we simply could not contemplate.

We have serious questions regarding how the Council reached its decision, and what factors might have influenced it in so doing, and to date do not know on what opinions or analyses the said decision was based. We also deplore that the decision was taken so late.

It would seem that the Department has deliberately adopted a policy designed to weaken our Association, resulting in a slow asphyxiation that will put the entire future of the Instants Chavirés in jeopardy. How are we to plan for a 2010 season in such conditions?

"Art must be where it's indispensible, which means everywhere" – Claude Lévêque, artist.

We maintain that an intermediary cultural space like the Instants Chavirés is an essential complement to existing institutions, and that it has made a major contribution to the diversity of the cultural offer, playing an essential role in discovering and promoting art for over 18 years.

Does the Seine-Saint-Denis Department still have the political will to maintain an internationally acclaimed artspace dedicated to contemporary creation, however modest it may be?

We demand the setting up of a round table with all our institutional partners to rehabilitate a relation which is clearly deteriorating. It is essential to redefine the financial framework together, regarding the unique nature of our artistic commitment as well as our geographical and structural specificity.

We urge you then to sign the online petition, and write to Claude Bartolone, President of the General Council of Seine-Saint-Denis, and / or to the Mayor of Montreuil, Dominique Voynet, to inform them of what the Instants Chavirés represents in the local, national and international cultural landscape, and express your own commitment to the lasting nature of this project.

You can address your correspondence directly to us at the following email address: soutiens[at]instantschavires[dot]com,
or by regular mail to
Instants Chavirés,
7, Rue Richard Lenoir
93100 Montreuil
France.
We undertake to forward it to the parties concerned.

Please circulate this communiqué as widely as you can, amongst everyone you know. Thank you.

Association Muzziques – Les Instants Chavirés

Nous reproduisons ci-dessous l’intégralité du récent communiqué des Instants Chavirés, “laboratoire des musiques improvisées, expérimentales et bruitistes” de Montreuil depuis 1991, l’une des rares scènes françaises de renommée internationale à œuvrer pour que les expérimentations musicales les plus pointues aient droit de cité, menacée par une baisse de financement drastique. Pour que les Instants continuent à vivre, prenez le temps de signer la pétition de soutien en ligne.

Les Instants en suspens

Le jeudi 2 juillet 2009 nous apprenions brutalement que le solde de la subvention de fonctionnement du Conseil général de Seine-Saint-Denis allouée à notre association était amputé de 25.000 €, soit une baisse de plus de 19%. À celle-ci se cumule la baisse de la subvention municipale de 7.000 €. En début d’année, la ville de Montreuil nous avait annoncé une diminution de 15.000 €, ramenée fin juin à une hauteur de 7.000 €.
C’est donc 32.000 € qui nous ont été retirés pour 2009.

Ces baisses de financement nous contraignent à annuler dans son intégralité la saison d’automne: concerts, projections vidéo et exposition. Le maintien même a minima d’une programmation nous entraînerait dans un déficit budgétaire que nous ne pouvons pas nous permettre.

Nous nous interrogeons sur le choix et les modalités de la décision du Conseil général et ignorons à ce jour sur quels diagnostics et analyses elle se base. Nous déplorons également l’excessif retard de cette décision.

Les façons de faire du Conseil général laissent à penser qu’il opte de façon délibérée pour une politique de fragilisation de l’association avec pour conséquence une asphyxie progressive mettant en danger l’avenir des Instants Chavirés. Comment envisager une programmation en 2010 dans ces conditions ?

“Il faut mettre l’art là où il est indispensable, c’est-à-dire partout” – Claude Lévêque, plasticien.

Nous affirmons qu’un lieu culturel intermédiaire comme les Instants Chavirés est un outil de complémentarité aux institutions : il contribue à la diversité de la proposition culturelle et joue un rôle fondamental dans l’accompagnement de l’émergence artistique depuis 18 ans. Y a-t-il encore une volonté politique de pérenniser dans le département de Seine-Saint-Denis et sur la ville de Montreuil, un lieu de diffusion et de production de renommée internationale axé sur la création contemporaine, aussi modeste soit-il ?

Nous demandons la mise en place d’une table ronde avec l’ensemble de nos interlocuteurs institutionnels pour assainir une relation partenariale déliquescente. Il est primordial de redéfinir ensemble les cadres financiers, au regard de la singularité de notre engagement artistique et de notre spécificité géographique et structurelle.

Nous vous invitons à signer la pétition en ligne, et à nous envoyer un courrier à l’attention de M. le Président du Conseil général de Seine-Saint-Denis, Claude Bartolone et/ou de Mme la Maire de Montreuil, Dominique Voynet, afin de leur signifier ce que représentent les Instants Chavirés dans le paysage culturel français et international, et exprimer votre attachement à la pérennité de ce projet.

Vous pouvez nous les adresser par email à l’adresse : soutiens[at]instantschavires[dot]com,
ou par courrier aux
Instants Chavirés
7, Rue Richard Lenoir
93100 Montreuil,
nous ferons suivre aux intéressés.

Merci de diffuser ce communiqué le plus largement possible autour de vous.

Association Muzziques – Les Instants Chavirés

On Friday, April 4th, the Western Massachusetts noise trio Grey Skull drive 7 hours from Amsterdam to Paris for a set that would clock in at just under 13 minutes. A bit brief, yes. But quite a feat for a group who use up so much energy live that they can only promise to "play until [they] can't anymore."

Instants Chavirés, Paris, February 4th. Something is not right when George Myers, Dan Cashman and Jeff Hartford of Grey Skull (Breaking World Records) take the stage last Friday at the Instants Chavirés. For one, their instruments aren't tuned—not, at least, in any way that might be expected to produce something deserving of the title of rock and roll. Second, some of the strings on Cashman's guitar and Myers' bass are broken—undoubtedly the fallout from the group's last thrash session in Holland, but a bit unsettling to see at the beginning of a show. Third, and perhaps most disturbingly, Hartford's high-hat looks like it has been run over by a car. Or at least bashed in so many times with a baseball bat that it looks more like a leaf of wilted spinach than an object designed for making sounds.

As the first thick drones ring out from Myers' bass, we witness something that seems more like a pantomime of a concert than a concert itself. Not just any concert, but the sludgiest, beefiest, most ridiculously heavy metal concert imaginable. Myers and Cashman slam their instruments up and down as though in the throes of the most virtuostic of Sabbathian guitar solos—only there are no golden riffs to be heard. Hartford emits a few lusty grunts then enters into his signature full-body head-bang, his long brown hair whipping up and down fast enough to knock out a small child. And yet there is no beat for him, the drummer, to rock out to. Yes, something is definitely wrong with this picture.

The antics that follow on stage constitute less a musical performance per se than a physical performance whose byproduct is sound. Myers fiddles with the tangle of mixers and pedals hooked up to his bass like an evil scientist executing the final operations on a machine designed to destroy the world—to random, and sometimes ear-splitting, acoustical results. Cashman, playing a kind of attention-deprived teenage caveman with a guitar, serenades the audience with his usual wordless blubbering, interrupted by the occasional defamatory punch: "Fuck You!" Before long, Jeff Hartford, a kind of hard rock Barney Flintstone who has lost his sense of humor, breaks up the dissonant wall of sound with his distinctive symmetrical pounding. As the sounds coming of Cashman's guitar and Myers' bass threaten to swerve out of control, Hartford's thrashing provides some order to the madness. All things considered it is only element of Greyskull's music that comes anywhere close to a melody.

There is something strikingly Paleolithic about Greyskull's music, something pre-verbal, pre-musical, almost. A group of three cavemen friends receive a gift of a guitar, a bass and a drum set, along with a letter describing what rock music is and what a rock concert generally consists of. Suspecting that this might be a way to sway the gods in their favor, they attempt to recreate "rock and roll" without ever having experienced it for themselves. Except that they never made it through to the end of the letter, where the writer describes the basic tenants of melody and rhythm. Nor to the stipulation in bold explaining that even though this thing called rock and roll might make them feel very excited—uncontrollably so, even—and that while they might be tempted to throw some punches over the course of the performance, they should probably refrain from throwing their equipment. But don’t tell that to Myers, who tosses his bass guitar off the stage towards the end of the set and breaks it in half. He would probably just shrug you off with a grunt, crank up the gain and hurl his amplifier on top.

Grand finale à la Grey Skull: Dan Cashman hurls himself off the stage, detonating an explosion of animal howling in the audience before climbing back up and collapsing in exhaustion. As the final feedback fades out, a voice from the rear of the bar pipes up: "Enough of this crap. Why not a little Beatles for a change?" A blaspheme to match Greyskull's 13 minute blaspheme, but also kind of the group's point all along. You will not hear anything like the Beatles at a Greyskull show, but you will certainly get an idea of what they might of sounded like if the group had been founded at Stonehenge in 2200 bc. Oogachaka.

Words: Emilie Friedlander, 2008

French version available on Fragil.org, a Nantes-based online cultural magazine. Link to original article here.




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