Influences:
JAPANESE BUTOH / DEUTSCHER AUSDRUCKSTANZ / GROTESQUE DANCE / CLASSICAL JAVANESE AND NEW GAMELAN / UNICA ZÜRN ANAGRAMS / MORSE CODE
ELKE POSTLER - performance, grotesque dance, vocals, slides & screenings
&
TOM ZUNK - compositions, STEINBERG Cubase and all instruments, vocals
Elke combines audio-visual installations and performances in her works.
She studied Communication Arts at Berlin Weissensee arts college making her degree in 2001. Participation in workshops, exhibitions and performances in and around Berlin, in Italy, Poland and the U.K. Works with various media: slides, video, photography and prefers collaborations with musicians.
Statement:
It is of importance for me to: achive an ambiguity in form, find absurd solutions and rooms that inspire me, to fathom the strangeness of my own inner spaces, embrace the shadowwoman as the source of inspiration.
Tom studied Ethnomusicology at Berlin..s Free University and classical Javanese Gamelan as well as innovative percussion techniques with Indonesian composer and musician extraordinaire Gutama Soegijo and was member of BANJAR GRUPPE Berlin, one of Europe..s few experimental Gamelan ensembles with numerous concerts nationwide and international from 1978 to 1994.
On stage with improvised music since 1976.
Own compositions since 1993.
He is worldwide one of the few soloists on the Waterphone and plays all kind of wind instruments, keyboards and percussions as well as electronic devices and - since late 2007 - THEREMIN!
Tom is on myspace with various past* and present projects in 8 more profiles:
PLEASE NOTE that the music featured on this profile are Toms only works for Cubasis software. This medium was only used between 2000 and 2002.
Influences
Sounds Like
DISTURBING NOISES / MORSE CODE
Blue Flashplayer:
Anagramme Vol.I 2001 / 4 tracks /
Der eingebildete Wahnsinn Im Staub dieses Lebens Niemand hoert auf zu leben Tausend Zaubereien were composed and realised 2001/2002 with STEINBERG Cubasis by Tom and are the most advanced compostions in a series for computer software using anagram poems by Berlin surrealist artist Unica Zürn (1926-1970).
Whereas earlier pieces were inspired by minimal and Gamelan music, these late pieces are based on conversions of the text via Morse code into musical events. Tom calls it MORSEalphaBEAT. If you know the Morse code and understand it fluently you can hear the text from the rhythmic patterns.
NOTE: This third album production has been released by the French underground label FRONT GAUCHE DE L..ART in Rennes.
Red Flashplayer:
Zuern 2001 / 9 tracks /
SYNTRON..s second album features for the first time anagrams by Unica Zürn. Liebet euch untereinander and Und wenn sie nicht gestorben sind were recorded under studio conditions at Tom..s.
Yellow Flashplayer:
SOL_Erste Synfonie 2000 / 4 tracks /
SYNTRON..s first album production. SOL_Erste Synfonie in four movements for STEINBERG Cubasis and live instruments (Kendang hand drums in part One and Four and Waterphone in part Two and Three). Below is the documentary recording done by Tom on DAT. Part One and Four live at "...undabdiepost!2000" - Festival für junge experimentelle Kunst, Postfuhramt Berlin June 2000. Part Two and Three live at Vernissage Sommerwerkstatt "Endmoräne e.V." Alter Bahnhof Gusow/Oderbruch/Germany.
SOL was the first collaboration of Tom Zunk with performer Elke Postler. Elke screened an abstract film shot by herself in the streets of Berlin in the weeks before the performance. She also performed a kind of archaic motionless dance in a beautiful golden costume her bodily parts painted all blue. There does exist a video of the Postfuhramt gig and we will hopefully place it here soon!
Complete recording, total length 47:03
SYNTRON create a synthesis of multiple media: performance, avant-garde music, lights and slides, the locations itself are combined to emulate BODY IMAGES in dreamlike atmospheres emphasized by use of surreal Anagram poems.
All music displayed here and most of our productions (see BLOG) employ Anagrams by Berlin surrealist artist UNICA ZÜRN (1926-1970) which are transformed letter by letter into musical structures by use of the MORSE code.
Anagrams are words or sentences that are built from the same letters of a given word or sentence. You may not add or leave any letters.
..
No writer has achieved such mastership. Her poems are surreal and dreamlike and elaborate to the extreme. Most were written in mental hospitals where she had to spend long periods of her life. She committed suicide.
For us her Anagrams are a never stopping source of inspiration.
In the following some of SYNTRONs productions are featured in detail, slideshows, flashplayers and videos - for their Anagrams please see the BLOG space:
Production III Staub
at Avantgarde Festival Schiphorst Sept 2006.
Foto by Uwe Schuhmacher
This was Performance Number Eight of the Anagram Im Staub Dieses Lebens.
Fotos of other performances of this piece see in the default slideplayer. The complete music in the BLUE FLASHPLAYER above!
Production VII Wasserstoffbombe
Performed first 2003 at Berlin club Lovelite this here is the THIRD and definitive version, at blacklight art exhibition SINNESWANDELN, Berlin.
Tom plays a disturbing noisescore on amplified steel cylinder with forks, amplified Waterphone, reverb unit and vocal. Elke performance and vocal.
Production XI BodyBuilding
A production that does NOT feature anagrams. Belonging to the category disturbing movements/disturbing noises it features Elke in an amplified bathtub filled with water. Her movements create the noises that are treated with effects by Tom in realtime. Below the film that Geoff Leigh made with his vintage camera. Thanks so much, Geoff! This piece was performed there for the fourth time...it is soso difficult nowadays to find a bath-tub that sounds good...
Production XII Fallout
Sept 11 2005 Römisches Bad/Roman Bath, Stadtbad Steglitz, Berlin
Im Rahmen des Tages des offenen Denkmals zum Thema "Krieg und Frieden"
Production XIII Dans
On July 28 2007SYNTRON did perform at that years Avant-Garde Festival in Schiphorst/North-Germany a project especially conceived for the event using for the first time Anagrams with French language created by Berlin surrealist Unica Zürn from lines of poems by Henri Michaux
A complete new systematic for acoustic instruments of both tuned and untuned kinds has been developed.
Again the anagram texts were examined closely and analysed to disclose hidden repeating structures therein. Those structures are transformed into repeating movements and pattern of both bodily and musical kind. Text interpretations and musical transformations of the Morse Code conversion form two corresponding levels of meaning.
In DANS all music is played from score. Instrumentation: silver flute, hand drum set (snare and floor tom), amplified Waterphone, two voices.
In the flashplayer below: three different version of DANS:
a.) a first six minute sketch recorded July 9 sporting just hand drums and flute
b.) a longer definitive sketch dating from July 20 of approx. 14:30 minutes in twelve consecutive movements still without vocals but with additional Waterphone.
c.) the complete documentary live recording of the premier stageing at Avantgarde Festival Schiphorst July 28 2007 recorded on MD via room mike from back of stage. Twelve movements seperated by moments of stillness, length 23 minutes.
SPECIAL GUEST: Benoit Delaune on bass guitar and additional vocal!
Quand un quatuor classique s'enflamme sur un rythme à 5 temps, porté par un quartet de jazz et des tambours de l'Afrique et des Antilles, notre sale histoire commune liée par les chaînes de l'esclavage s'écrase devant l'évidence que l'humanité respire et gronde dans l'altérité.
"Esclavage" - Jean-Richard CODJIA - Adaptation Nicolas GENEST, Ensemble ARCHIMUSIC "Tchebele" - Philippe GOUYER MONTOUT - Adaptation Jean-Rémy GUEDON, Ensemble ARCHIMUSIC A découvrir sur notre page vidéo...
Diar Elke & Tom. We like you surrealistic union of arts. Over deeply of suggestibility. You open new worlds & spaces. Thanks at all. Cheers. Alexander.
thank you for the request. i love your work. i wish to see you live someday. and i have to say, i guess i have seen ms.seki on your top friend page at tacheles in berlin if i am not mistaken.
