performance de la cellule d’intervention metamkine

The long career of the Cellule d'Intervention Metamkine provides a perspective on how the traditions of expanded cinema and multimedia performance intersected with the fate of analog film in its post-industrial phase. In the early 1990s, the collective consisting of musician Jérôme Noetinger and filmmakers Christophe Auger and Xavier Quérel was in fact among the founders of Atelier MTK in Grenoble, one of the first European artist-run film labs. These autonomous spaces, which preserved and reinvented the possibilities of analog cinema just as the advent of the digital seemed to spell its demise, fostered independence and experimentation beyond standards and routines not only in the production, but also in the presentation of film works. This DIY ethos resonates with the practice of live image and sound processing developed by Metamkine over the years and based on the idea of détournement and creative assemblage of reproduction devices, such as the film projector and the tape recorder. Emerging from a context ripe with improvisation and intermedia collaborations, this power trio has over time perfected a distinctive performance style consisting of a fluid and spontaneous dialogue between 16mm projection and electroacoustic music—as incredibly polished and cohesive as it is always exciting and unpredictable. They never published any finished work: it’s always a unique happening, a process, a jam session. The workings of the lab are literally brought on stage, where they stand surrounded by the equipment, very much like a band, immersed alongside the audience in an optical-sound machine made of multiple projectors beaming through mirrors and lenses, enveloping the space and riffing with tapes and synthesizers to create an intense, layered experience.
( Tommaso Isabella )