Living in the End of Times 

Our early contemporary world is characterized by its ”post” dimensions (postcolonial, postmodern, post-internet, post…) but also its “trans” aspects (transhumanism, transdisciplinary, trans…).

The boundaries are liquid and blurred, for better and for worse. There is a deep need for human beings to go beyond, to go through and across boundaries, whether explicit or implicit: to transcend the dystopian realities that are depicted throughout multiple and simultaneous crises, to acknowledge historical chronologies and take time to reflect, embody, and shapeshift. There is a utopian fantasy that lives in all of us, that moves through borders and touches our plural nature.

Taken from the work of Slavoj Žižek, Living in the End Times, this series aims to translate all of the above into sounds and samples. Each session is one hour long and expresses the state of being thrown between extremes: between a chaotic dystopian ending and the profound need and possibility of re-envisioned resurgences of recovery, transmutation, and resistance. 

This series fosters a narrative experience of sound and texture, adding sample extracts from blurbs that resonate with these tense and manifold states of the world: interviews, advertisements, movies, personal writings, and theoretical lectures through the social sciences and lenses of the humanities rise. Deconstructive grasps of the present are built as a vibrating patchwork, unfolding interactive and relational narrations and exchanges with the listener. From experimental and ambient to harsh noise and electronic music, with Marina Mardas we travel through genres and presupposed limits.

This series is developed by Sainte Marina as an ongoing residency with Tikka Radio, a web radio based in Marseille that is a space for free experimentation.

11.07.2021  Session #1

A ball-shaped island, far away, called Earth.
What is its body? Is the sea containing the land or is the land containing the sea? 
Sounds that synthesize the feeling of our body, of our collective bodies. 
We are our own lands, our own regions of layers of flesh.
What does it feel to be ourselves throughout the thin lines of our bodies, that contain the self, selves, and those of others. What kinds of battles can identities hold within our skins? Humans are blooming all over this giant ball-shaped island. Those fearful yet shared questions appear in sounds, like a deafening threat, chasing the mind with dark matter. Images of old memories pass by, moving through the unconscious caves of land. Being as bliss, consciousness existing within and around each of our cells. 

29.08.2021  Session #2

In a dark room, there is a door. 
It is narrowly open, with a thump resounding from it. An ancient ritual is taking place and the eye must encounter it by opening its pupil wider. An (un)lighted rite of passage. A bath of vibrations and rhythms are gathered to celebrate a new cycle, on a part of the globe where the sun is always down. Glitched memories of a fractured neoliberal system. There is blood, there are bodies in shreds but standing, growing: brains, veins, mist, street lamps.

A flag in flames is at the top of the hill, spreading its black thick smoke over the city. Revolution is happening. Eventually, the sun goes up and the thirst of power and corruption bursts with its light, evaporating like a laughing gas, giggling and falling upon itself. 

26.09.2021  Session #3

A star explodes, recalling its life. A cosmic odyssey that traces the translation of death as a feeling through sound. A state of passage into the unknown where answers don’t exist. A rebirth, a beginning, and an ending. Aren’t we all dying and yet reborn through each cycle that life carries us through? What does it mean for you to «be»?