Petr Válek, Ondřej Merta, Jara Tarnovski — Punctum (Flaming Pines)
The Czech trio of Petr Válek, Ondřej Merta and Jara Tarnovski are intrepid musical explorers. As musician, painter, and illustrator, Válek constructs electro-mechanical kinetic sound objects and diy synthesizers. Merta balances music making, teaching and electronic instrument design at Bastl Instruments which he co-founded. Tarnovski is in a plethora of musical projects and runs the label Jipangu, which focuses on experimental music and sound art. The trio previously released Metal where they performed utilizing Válek’s sculptures and synthesizers along with metal ball bearings, kitchen utensils and junk.
Punctum, recorded live at a community space in Prague, takes a similar tact. Before the performance, the three combed the basement, dragging up pots, pans, junk appliances and old bicycles, and headed outside to collect tree branches and stones. Over the course of two improvisations, the group attacks their collected detritus and Válek’s electroacoustic machines with unbridled vigor. First up is the 18-minute “cut pum n” which begins with restless clatter, gradually building in velocity and density. The three are pensive listeners, weaving together the variegated layers of interstitial sonic textures and timbral detail. There is always an underlying sense of intentionality to their collective clamor, with metallic jangling dings chiming out from the cyclical clatter and pommeling, percussive bustle.
For the second improvisation, “cut pun m,” the trio is joined by SunDog (vocalist Isabelle Duthoit and eRikm utilizing various electronics). The addition of two additional voices into the mix might suggest that the proceedings would get more cluttered and anarchic. But while the palette is expanded, the strategies of the first improvisation carry through. It is impossible to pick out extended vocalizations from electromechanical squeaks and chirps or percussive clanks and sputters from electronic oscillations or the rustling and scrapes of the flotsam and jetsam scattered around the space and the five make the most of those synergies. Here in particular, they are attentive to building densities without overwhelming the sonorities of their expansive auditory assemblage. There is a more clearly defined arc to the improvisation, starting with a more open array of sounds that accrue around a ground of electronic hum. Percussive patterns emerge, get layered across each other and are woven in to threads of abraded tonality, teetering gesticulations, and spectral howls with deft control. In the final few minutes, they slowly unwind the layers, as if preparing to distribute the collection of devices back to where they were found, advancing a natural statsis out of the spare creaks, shudders, and clangs.
If, as Barthes claims, cameras are 'clocks for seeing', the space they show is nevertheless subject to the temporal hallucinations of human experience. This is the dialectical lesson of Barthes' Camera Lucida: the subjective time of the spectator invades the historical space of the image. Such a proposition might have already been intimated in eighteenth-century theory, with the concept of what was then called the "punctum temporis" of the picture.
David Bate (2023) Photography After Postmodernism
Le « jour » s’achève… C’est la nuit et ce dont je vais parler sera plutôt de l’ordre de la nuit. D’une nuit qui n’est pas le contraire du jour, peut-être un autre jour, au sens où le jour c’est aussi une ouverture sur un autre espace.
UN JOUR DERRIDA | Valerio Adami, Jacques-Olivier Bégot, Daniel Bougnoux, et al.
punctum: that moment captured in a photograph that means something slightly different to everyone, and that challenges you, making it difficult to understand why it’s so moving.
The punctum points to those features of a photograph that seem to produce or convey a meaning without invoking any recognizable symbolic system. This kind of meaning is unique to the response of the individual viewer of the image. [...Roland] Barthes insists that the punctum is not simply the sum of desires projected into the photograph. Instead, it arises from details that are unintended or uncontrolled by the photographer. Photography can be distinguished from painting or drawing in that its apparatus visualizes the world automatically rather than being wholly informed by the interventions of the photographer. The theory of the punctum speaks the indexical nature of the photographic medium. It also accounts for the importance of emotion and subjectivity in interacting with photographs. [source.]
Have you ever looked at a photo and felt… struck? Your breath catches, a flash of emotion, there’s a visceral reaction you can’t quite put a finger on. You are affected, and you sit there staring at the photo trying to find out why, but you just can’t quite place it.
What is that?
I’ve been searching for it lately, and it’s brought up more questions than answers. Questions like what makes a…
