Lesson Nº 1 + The Ascension
Glenn Branca has always been a musician positioned halfway between the role of avant-garde composer and that of a rock musician. A pupil and disciple of the masters of American minimalism such as La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Philip Glass and Steve Reich, he has always had to fight against prejudice and fierce criticism. His position was certainly uncomfortable, too academic for rock fans and too “politically incorrect” for academics. In fact, Branca was trying to unhinge all the limits imposed by the rigid schemes of the avant-garde, aware of the fact that those who want to be truly avant-garde should have no limits. John Cage was also able to criticize him, even calling him a fascist ( Luciano Berio also did so for all minimalists) for the excessive rigidity of his compositions, even though he recognized his innovative power. After having created his best known album, The Ascension (1981), a true monument of maximalism played with a classical rock formation (guitars, bass and drums), he tries to approach a different format, the Symphony, as always halfway between rock and academia. Branca will like the experiment and will re-propose it several times in the following decades, to date there are sixteen symphonies (not all recordings are available). Here is how young Branca’s ensemble appeared to the American composer John Adams in one of his first live performances of the First Symphony: “Branca’s event that I listened to at the Japan Center Theater in San Francisco in 1981 was one of his symphonies for guitar . The group didn’t look very different from thousands of other independent or alternative rock bands of the time: guys in jeans and worn t-shirts busy with cables while maintaining that typical distracted expression of rock musicians.

Lucy Mcrae
HEAVY DUTY LOVE
A cautionary narrative in an uncomfortable, complex debate on the scientific acceleration directing our evolutionary path —from gene-edited babies to CRISPR to AI — Heavy Duty Love is a mental health prop existent as a tactile mechanical structure, asking, “As we head toward a life designed from scratch, will we seek new types of intimacy?”. Realised as a speculative domestic device compensating for a lack of human touch in early life, Heavy Duty Love sandwiches the body between layers of soft, dampening materials normally used in contemporary camping or construction.

Tribe City
Hundreds of beings and dreamlike and dystopian elements inhabit the digital and autonomous works that are part of this project. “It’s a portrait of the masses,” summarise the artists, whose fascination with group dynamics, technological phenomena and the ego are expressed in Tribe with an eclectic selection of individuals who bring to life deeply recognisable social attitudes. Collective behaviour and manipulation are recurring themes in SMACK’s work, which often uses popular visual references and light-hearted aesthetics to present us with an uncomfortable reflection of who we are.

요르단 울프슨
ジョーダンウォルフソン

Female Figure

The stare of the animatronic sculpture is so intense, it would put anyone uncomfortable. The mask is probably there as a way to avoid creating a human face using animatronics but it also definitely adds to the creepiness of the overall look. The importance of the gaze is found throughout Wolfson’s work but it finds here a very special interpretation. He gives the ability to gaze to two different entities, a stripper and a robot, who are by definition never supposed to look up. The visitor is no longer in control of the situation, creating the awkwardness that is at the core of the work.

INFLUENCER
“There is a certain kind of social criticism in each publication, but they do not correspond to specific facts. I enjoy playing with common situations and presenting them in an ambiguous and uncomfortable way. For me, it is not important to focus on the content too much in one direction because I seek to agitate the spectator and force them to think for themselves. They must find their own explanation to what they are seeing,” Extraweg

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„In jeder Veröffentlichung steckt eine gewisse Art von Gesellschaftskritik, aber sie entsprechen nicht bestimmten Tatsachen. Es macht mir Spaß, mit alltäglichen Situationen zu spielen und sie mehrdeutig und unbequem darzustellen. Mir ist es nicht wichtig, den Inhalt zu sehr in eine Richtung zu fokussieren, denn ich versuche den Zuschauer zu agitieren und zum Mitdenken zu zwingen. Sie müssen ihre eigene Erklärung für das Gesehene finden.“ Extraweg

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« Il y a une certaine forme de critique sociale dans chaque publication, mais elles ne correspondent pas à des faits précis. J’aime jouer avec des situations courantes et les présenter de manière ambiguë et inconfortable. Pour moi, ce n’est pas important de trop se concentrer sur le contenu dans un sens car je cherche à agiter le spectateur et à le forcer à penser par lui-même. Ils doivent trouver leur propre explication à ce qu’ils voient » Extraweg

ロン·ミュエック
РОН МЬЮ́ЕК
big kiss
Hyperrealist sculptor Ron Mueck works in the realm of the ultra-real where he spends hundreds of hours perfecting the shape of the human form, the appropriate color of skin, and the most realistic hair texture. All of his efforts culminate in incredibly lifelike figurative sculptures with one small (or large) exception: the artworks are often gigantic or miniaturized, resulting in an uncomfortable “does not compute” moment when trying to comprehend exactly what you’re looking at. Each sculpted person is as bizarre as it is amazing, in part because of the raw intimacy portrayed in their faces, as if we are somehow witnessing the documentation of a private moment.

The Uncomfortable