Bene & Šicko: On the New Audiovisual Project A void time
You are cordially invited to public lecture.
AFAD, Hviezdoslavovo námestie 18, Room 103
The lecture is also open to the public.
Bene & Šicko are A void time
What happens when a multimedia artist invites a rapper for a coffee and proposes a collaboration rooted in the theoretical and philosophical ideas of Vilém Flusser? One thing led to another and an image and a sound was born.
Then they run for dozens of kilometres through the Carpathians, watched from behind the trees by the goblins of their grandmothers’ tales—creatures you never need to see, if you can imagine them. They talk about writing and images as the kilometers slip by, and before they know it, all their heroes and heroines are running alongside them. And just as suddenly, they are sitting again in a café filled with their ancestors. The rapper introduces the artist to DOOM, Dilla, and the Wu-Tang Clan, while the artist introduces the rapper to Daphne Oram and Susan Kare. The rapper feels like he’s known Daphne Oram forever, and the artist becomes friends with DOOM. They type on ancient 8-bit computers, trying to unravel the story like an old cassette tape already waiting for Space Invaders. Who will win the next round?
What happens when even the creators themselves can no longer tell whether the image is trying to get closer to sound, or whether rap is simply copying the visual? A sampled voice of Flusser in a noisy lo-fi beat alternates with rap, all overseen by patterns. It all blends together like in a pub taproom, but here, everything is one, because one is everything. They don’t know whether the image is trying to kill writing, or whether writing threatens the visual. Or are they simply walking hand in hand? Never mind, that’s just Ján Šicko and Bene, a void time.
Multimedia artist Ján Šicko and rapper Bene meet in an audio-visual performance, a collage of language, time, and space of rap, beat sounds, grain and pixels, patterns, and quotes from Vilém Flusser.
The creation of the work was supported using public funding by the Slovak Arts Council.
