Xing
presents
Mattin
Seize the Means of Complexity
new release Xong collection (XX09)
__________________________________________
Xing presents the LP Seize the Means of Complexity by Mattin, ninth release of XONG collection - artist records. The release is on white vinyl, in a limited numbered edition of 150 copies. The collector's edition consists of 20 copies, each accompanied by a different polaroid - credit card size - portraying fragments from the social media universe.

Seize the Means of Complexity, the new record by Mattin is a call for all social media users of the world to unite: "We are in the asshole of history. Broken individuals struggling with mental health, media obsession, need for attention and legitimation. Burning souls searching for validation, suffering from imposter syndrome in a post-Netflix wasteland. From the ruins of our subjectivity, something can be built; something must be built. To seize the means of complexity, we must comprehend the tools of algorithmic subsumption, and leverage that knowledge to steer their development towards an open-source conception of subjectivity. We should all have access to the codes, technologies, models, and complexities that shape our lives. By embracing noise rather than shying away from it, this adaptive open-source subject could pave the way for a future transcending capitalist realism and its end of history, forging a new form of communism fit for the 21st century."

Seize the Means of Complexity is the recomposition of some materials Mattin used in his interactive performances over the last year: a mass of musical fragments that crystallise as a call for mobilisation.

As the title of the album advises, or rather states: to not be crushed by the symptoms that social media produces on us, we must seize the opportunity opened up by the internet in its widest complexity. How can we collectivize the psychosomatic consequences produced by the Meganets? How can we reverse-engineer social media? The new record by Mattin, commissioned for Xong collection, contains recordings from TikTok and Instagram (hits, pop songs, advertising and voice), that can be heard as a chorus of fragments from the multitude addressing psychic destabilization and the horizon of paranoia and alienation. This plunderphonia of sounds transmitted by the global media opens the possibility of addressing what it means to be human beyond the liberal individual. Seize the Means of Complexity is a proposition, a sonic stage for something to happen.

Thank you Anil Anil Bawa-Cavia for the title and to Patricia Reed and Miguel Prado for the great conversation at the Social Discipline podcast which influenced some of the ideas developed on this record.

Xong is the name of the collection produced by Xing, a vinyl-only record label of works by both Italian and international personalities linked to the variegated worlds of live performativity. The collection explores a geography of artists who present this sonic field as a platform to expand their staged worlds. "The space of the record" is given focus and amplifies their poetics as both a sonic and physical phenomenon. Xong is a unique project that draws out divergent understandings of the performative and live arts, beyond genre and intersecting between different practices. Xong collects a series of original creations that constitute an expanded program. Each physical record is a numbered edition on white vinyl hosting the solidification of the gesture. A wave upon wave, a series of "Music-Non-Music" to actualize both the artists and listeners imagination. Xing is a cultural organization based in Bologna, Italy, operating with the purpose of planning, supporting and promoting products and events characterized by an interdisciplinary approach toward the issues of contemporary culture. The records are distributed in the experimental music and art circuits. Main retailers for international sale: Soundohm (mail order) and Flash Art (only collector’s editions). ***

Mattin
Seize the Means of Complexity
realised by Mattin at Abject Musik Studio, 2022
mastered by Rashad Becker, Clunk Studio
cover by Mattin
artwork Xing
print handle with care Berlin
format vinyl (white)
released by Xing in an edition of 150 copies
including collector’s edition of 20 copies, each accompanied by a different polaroid portraying fragments of the social media universe, 5,4 cm x 8,6 cm, signed by the artist
cat.n° XONG collection XX09 (2023)
label Xing
Anti-Copyright

tracks:
A: (20:00)
B: (20:06)
***

XONG COLLECTION. CATALOGUE:
Kinkaleri/Jacopo Benassi – ONCE MORE (XX01 - 2021)
Marcello Maloberti – MARTELLATE. SCRITTI FIGHI 1990-2020. LYDIA MANCINELLI LEGGE MARCELLO MALOBERTI (XX02 - 2021)
Giampiero Cane/Daniela Cattivelli – Postfantamusicologia (XX03 - 2021)
Romeo Castellucci/Scott Gibbons - IL TERZO REICH
 (XX04 - 2022)
Luciano Maggiore - Very cheap non-human animal imitations (XX05 - 2022)
Margherita Morgantin/Ilaria Lemmo/Beatrice Goldoni - COSMIC SILENCE 5, fluorescence 4
 (XX06 - 2022)
Canedicoda/Renato Grieco – Ehm (XX07 - 2023)
Invernomuto – VERNASCACADABRA (XX08 - 2023)
Mette Edvardsen - Livre d'images sans images (XX10 - 2023)
Valerio Tricoli - A Circle of Grey (XX11 - 2023)
***


Audio links (excerpts):
https://soundcloud.com/xing-records/sets/xx09-mattin-seize-the-means-of-complexity-excerpts



Xong distribution:
* Soundohm (mail order)
standard edition (E 23)
collector’s edition (E 50)
* Flash Art

* stores: Bologna (MODO Infoshop, DISCO D’ORO, Sonic Belligeranza MEGASTORE); Milan (Triennale bookshop, Hangar Bicocca, Settantaventidue); Bozen (Museion Books); Turin (Paint it Black); Venice (bruno); Prato (Museo Pecci Bookshop); Roma (MACRO bookstore) https://xing.it/xong

Presentation of "Seize the Means of Complexity" Italian tour

9th December Mattin Raum, Bologna
10th December Mattin Nub Space, Pistoia
11th December 7 pm - Conversation with Margherita Morgantin + Live Action - Mattin - Seize the Means of Complexity (XONG collection XX09 - dischi d'artista, Xing), Casa Degli Artisti– Milano – Corso Garibaldi 89/A
12th December Mattin - Deciphering Social Dissonance - presentation and worskhop with the art collectives in residence, Casa Degli Artisti– Milano – Corso Garibaldi 89/A


Out Now:
Social Dissonance book with Preface by Ray Brassier Urbanomic (Falmouth)
Review by Mario Aguiriano, Radical Philosophy
PDF
Reviews
Social Dissonance, interview with Mattin - Pierre d'Alancaisez
Entretien avec le philosophe et artiste Mattin Par réalisé par Cécile Malaspina
« Noise » Leçons d’un empirisme sonore déchaîné, Rue Decartes (Paris)

Mattin "Seize the Means of Complexity" LP xong (Bologna)
Asha Sheshadri & Mattin "Slices of Life" CD Edition Eric Schmid (Chicago) Mille PLateaux (Frankfurt)
Noel Meek & Mattin "Homage to Annea Lockwood" Book + CD Recital Records (Los Angeles) Reviews
Al Karpenter featuring Sunik Kim, Dominic Coles and Triple Negative "The Forthcoming" LP ever/never (NYC) Reviews
CIA Debutante & Al Karpenter LP ever/never (NYC) Reviews
Regler "regel #10 (Minimalism)" CD Seminal Records (Brazil/Berlin) Reviews


Upcoming:
Disonancia social, Mattin con prólogo de Ray Brassier y epílogo de Cécile Malaspina, traducido por Claudio Iglesias, Dobra Robota (Buenos Aires) y Tsonami Ediciones (Valparaiso)
Abolishing Capitalist Totality: What Is To Be Done Under Real Subsumption? book edited by Anthony Iles and Mattin, Archive Books (Berlin)
Mattin "Fragmented Life" LP bruit direct disques (Paris)
Regler + Courtis "regel #13 (Noise Rock)" LP Nashazphone (Cairo)



Shows, Presentations and Workshops:
20-27th November, SOUND CAPTURE AND FUGITIVE NOISE WORKSHOP by NRU, SSTRAPP Bidston Observatory
2nd December Conversation on Art & Philosophy, Arnolfini, Bristol
Presentation of "Seize the Means of Complexity" Italian tour 9th December Mattin Raum, Bologna
10th December Mattin Nub Space, Pistoia
11th December 7 pm - Conversation with Margherita Morgantin + Live Action - Mattin - Seize the Means of Complexity (XONG collection XX09 - dischi d'artista, Xing), Casa Degli Artisti– Milano – Corso Garibaldi 89/A
12th December Mattin - Deciphering Social Dissonance - presentation and worskhop with the art collectives in residence, Casa Degli Artisti– Milano – Corso Garibaldi 89/A


2024

16th February Damp Misery (Vomir & Paul Hegarty), Triple Negative, CIA Debutante & Al Karpenter, Cafe Oto, London
18th February CIA Debutante & Al Karpenter, Cave12, Geneva
9th of April, 14h-18h, ArTeC Grad School, Paris


Ongoing:
Validation, Research Process, Index, Stockholm

Noise Research Union (with Cecile Malaspina, Sonia de Jager, Martina Raponi, Miguel Prado and Inigo Wilkins)

Expanding Concert (Lisbon 2019-2023)
with Barbara Silva, Margarida Garcia, Regina de Morais, DJ Marfox, Pierre Bal-Blanc..
Galerias Municipais


Expanding Concert (2019-2023) is a four year long concert distributed in time and space through different media: 5 public interventions in 5 different galleries in Lisbon and 5 texts published in the city. The concert was initiated by the invitation of a single artist but it will gradually continue to expand; first by interacting with the audience, then by asking writers to respond to each intervention and finally by inviting other musicians to collaborate on the next interventions. The first concert took pace in December 2019 at Galeria Boavista with a response by Bárbara Silva. The second concert took palace at Pavilhão Branco and continued to explore the notion of call and response in improvisation in an expanded form: each public intervention is a form of call. For this intervention Lisbon musician based Margarida Garcia has been invited to join and respond to the text as a way to open up the process. The critic Ana Teixeira Pinto also has been invited to attend the intervention and to write a text afterwards. Her responses will attempt to contextualize the intervention in relation to the artistic, political and economic situation of Lisbon at the time. Each public intervention works as a proposition exploring our self-perception at a specific given time and place. By contrast the responses will be written outside of these public moments, taking its own time and allowing for reflection on broader issues such as different urban changes taking place in the city. One can think here of structural silences that in this particular case will take months. The interventions will be documented and at the end a publication will be made, formed of documentation of the concerts and the texts. Expanding Concert (2019-2023) is a durational concert attempting to think itself historically while it is happening.


--
Social Discipline podcast
Miguel Prado & Mattin thinking aloud with invited guests about the current events regarding CODIV-19. They let the unconscious improvise in this absolutely unexpected present, trying to render actual a no longer distant future




Bio:
Mattin is an artist, musician and theorist working conceptually with noise and improvisation. Through his practice and writing, he explores performative forms of estrangement as a way to deal with structural alienation. Mattin has exhibited and toured worldwide. He has performed in festivals such as Performa (NYC), No Fun (NYC), Club Transmediale (Berlin), Arika (Glasgow) and lectured and taught in institutions such as Dutch Art Institute, Cal Arts, Bard College, Paris VIII, Princeton University and Goldsmiths College. In 2017 he completed a PhD at the University of the Basque Country under the supervision of the philosopher Ray Brassier. Along with Anthony Iles he edited the book Noise & Capitalism (Kritika/Arteleku 2009). In 2012 CAC Brétigny and Tuamaturgia published Unconsitituted Praxis, a book collecting his writing plus interviews and reviews from performances. Anthony Iles and Mattin are currently in the final stages of editing the volume Abolishing Capitalist Totality: What is To Be Done Under Real Subsumption? (Archive Books). Urbanomic published last year his book Social Dissonance. Mattin is part of the bands Billy Bao and Regler and has over 100 releases in different labels worldwide. He is currently co-hosting with Miguel Prado the podcast Social Discipline. Prado and Mattin are also part of Noise Research Union with Cecile Malaspine, Sonia de Jager, Martina Raponi and Inigo Wilkins. Mattin took part in 2017 in documenta14 in Athens and Kassel.


Material
Regler
Anti-Copyright
@abjectsubject
mattin at mattin period org