Expanding Concert

Expanding Concert (Lisbon 2019 – 2023)

“Almost one year ago, Mattin and Margarida Garcia (re)opened a space for reflection: how can art (in this case, an on-going concert) answer global and local issues without using the common irony that entered art discourse, since, at least, Warhol’s cans? […] The second live performance of Expanding Concert happened during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of moving freely, everyone had to keep their distance. Instead of faces showing reactions, surgical masks hid facial expressions.” These lines are from the text written by Regina de Morais in response to last year’s concert. What has changed since then in our lives? How are we moving forward in this troubled era? The third edition of the Expanding Concert invites you to pose the questions with us and make ideas resonate within the gallery.

Expanding Concert is a five years concert distributed in time and space through different mediums: 5 public interventions in 5 different galleries in Lisbon and 5 texts. This concert explores the notion of call and response in improvisation in an expanded form: each public intervention is a form of call. As a response, a writer will be asked to attend the intervention and to write a text about it after. These responses will attempt to contextualise the intervention in relation to the artistic, political and economic situation of Lisbon at the time. Expanding Concert is a long improvised concert attempting to think itself historically while it is happening.
Mattin is an artist from Bilbao – living in Berlin – working with noise and improvisation. Using a conceptual approach, he aims to question the nature and parameters of improvisation, specifically the relationship between the idea of ”freedom” and constant innovation that it traditionally implies, and the established conventions of improvisation as a genre. Mattin considers improvisation not only as an interaction between performers and instruments, but as a situation involving all the elements that constitute a concert situation, including the audience and the social and architectural space. He has recently completed a PhD at the University of the Basque Country under the supervision of Ray Brassier and Josu Rekalde. Along with Anthony Iles they edited the book Noise & Capitalism in 2009. In 2012 CAC Brétigny and Tuamaturgia published Unconstituted Praxis, a book collecting his writing plus interviews and reviews from performances that he has been part of. Both books are available online. Urbanomic will publish his monograph “Social Dissonance” later this year. Mattin participated in documenta14 in Athens and Kassel (2017).

Margarida Garcia (Lisbon, 1977) has been developing since the mid-nineties a very personal and distinct language for electric contrabass. She moves well beyond contemporary improv praxis with a coil that runs deep into the contemporary psychedelic underground. Before relocated in New York in 2004, where she lived for seven years and was found regularly playing concerts with Loren Connors and Marcia Bassett, she was a very present figure in the subterraneous sound of Lisbon. There, she met guitarist Manuel Mota, close collaborator since her musical beginnings – their very first joint release dates back to 1998. Her explorations of mostly darkly dramatic arco space, in deeply muddy, quiet territory, have been also encountered in collaborations with Thurston Moore, David Maranha, Gabriel Ferrandini, Mattin and Nöel Akchoté among others. Visual arts play also an important role in her activity, having published a book of drawings, made several exhibitions, and artwork for many music releases. Since 2014 she lives between Lisbon and Antwerp, where she works frequently with Graindelavoix (Björn Schmelzer) in its various artistic endeavors. The collaboration with Mattin started in 2003 with their duo “for permitted consumption”, and stretched to several live formations and other releases including Kevin Failure, Loy Fankbonner, Billy Bao, Tim Barnes, Eddie Prévost, Rhodri Davies, Mark Wastell, Emma Heditch and Fluxus artist Jeff Perkins.

Producer and DJ, Marfox is a downright urban, suburban and ghetto legend in Lisbon, as well as a renowned name on a worldwide network of dedicated seekers of new directions in electronic social music. Having also released on Lit City Trax, Boomkat Records, Warp Records and delivered commissioned remixes for artists such as Fever Ray, Elza Soares, tUnE-yArDs or Panda Bear, he is undoubtedly one of the figure-heads of the roster of Príncipe. His most recent outing on the Lisbon based dance label was 2016’s “Chapa Quente”, lauded by FACT Magazine as “practically perfect” or distinguished as “Album Of The Month” on Mixmag’s April issue. Marfox has been playing live extensively in the last few years in Europe and the UK, visits to Brazil, Uganda, Angola, Russia and tours in the US, Canada, Mexico, Australia and East Asia.