After a couple months’ wait, the full documentation of the first Original Cultures event is finally available online, starting with an audio documentary detailing what happened in the music workshops and during the final showcase. Following that will be a two part video documentary dropping towards the end of September.

For those who might have missed the news first time round and are wondering what Original Cultures is all about you can the check the site (above) or the daily diary published on Shook during the event back in June. To sum up though, over the course of 4 days Original Cultures brought together 6 artists from the UK, Italy and Japan and the fields of music and visual arts to create art, exchange and learn. This was all done via a series of workshops and seminars before a final showcase where all the art created in the days prior was showcased to the public in a 2 hour audio/visual event.

The audio documentary focuses on the music side of things and is now available to stream on Soundcloud, in two parts. It features tracks created by the three musicians, 2tall aka Om Unit (UK), Tatsuki (JP) and Tayone (IT), at various stages of ‘evolution’, mixes from the workshops, interviews, audio from the seminars and exclusive audio from the final showcase. Some of the mixes are also available to download via Original Cultures’ podcast feed, full links and details below.

The video documentary will give more details on everything that happened during the week including the visual arts workshop and what happened after the event. For now you can check photos, teaser videos and more on the following sites to get a better idea of the whole thing: Vimeo, Flickr, Tumblr, daily blogs.

For now enjoy the music!

PS: looks like I can’t display embeds so no fancy looking player, I’m afraid you have to click the links!

Original Cultures Bologna pilot – audio documentary pt1 by Original Cultures

Original Cultures Bologna pilot – audio documentary pt2 by Original Cultures

Original Cultures audio podcasts (including documentary mixes and more) (and the RSS and iTunes feeds for those who want to subscribe direct)

Whoa. That is the most direct and natural reaction to what happened last night, on the evening on day 4 at the closing of the Original Cultures pilot. Whoa. The live showcase, the crowning of the 4 days of work for the artists and the cherry on top of the pilot if you will, the event where the public gets to see everything that we’ve all worked on for so long, was a success – and as an organiser this isn’t a boast, it really, truly was.

We had a packed house, with over 300 people, we emptied the bar, the artists got a thunderous round of applause and demands for an encore, which they obliged leaving us with people in the venue until 2am, when we’d officially announced it would end at midnight. One of the members of the city’s council, who sits on the cultural board came at midnight, on a saturday, and personally shook the hand of the artists, thanking them for the show. One of the guys who runs the company which handles the space was dancing and smiling all night, telling us at midnight that we could have another 30mins of show if we wanted – so the 4 musicians, Tayone, 2tall, Tatsuki and Bruno Briscik, went back on stage and jammed for 20 mins. By 2am Will Barras, DEM and Ericailcane were still painting – which is all the more hilarious considering what happened earlier in the evening. Let me rewind for a sec…

We got to the venue around lunch – the musicians soundchecked in the PM while the visual artists put the finishing touches to their creations and masterminded how the visuals would play out throughout the night. Things were going well, with the necessary high level of running around involved when you put together an event. And then as we approached opening time, the decision was made to cancel the live painting aperitivo due to technical issues – partly true, but also due to the fact that the visual artists actually stopped working as people entered the venue. Having been at it for 5 days non stop, there was no way we would force anyone to do something just because it was originally written in the programme.

With this in mind we opened and hoped for the best. People came looking for the live painting and decided to maybe come back when they learnt it wasn’t happening. Others came in regardless, curiously looking around the venue, trying to understand what was going to happen 4 hours later. As I stood in the courtyard next to the bar, DJing, I kept thinking to myself that maybe even without the live painting we’d still manage to bring enough people in. You see the thing is, the whole live painting is quite popular here in Bologna, and the visual artists were definitely one of the main attractions of the project for people in the area, mainly because Ericailcane and DEM are local artists who everybody knows. Losing the live painting meant we might well lose a big amount of people. As I tried to not think about it too much, considering that we knew we still had something incredible prepared but that we couldn’t really tell people without giving the game away, I got on with trying to make people drink and enjoy themselves as the evening rolled on. And then I looked up, around 8 or so and Will was walking around with a tub of paint… and that’s when it all started going crazy.

DEM, Ericailcane and Will painted from 8 till 10, as they did people flocked to the venue, by the time I finished the DJ set in the courtyard, the venue was nearly full and I could barely believe it. The show started with the first hour split between Tatsuki and 2tall/Om Unit doing solo shows of about 30mins and the second hour with Tayone, Bruno and the two of them doing the live show they’d spent the last 3 days creating. As I stood there looking at Tatsuki on the stage playing to the audience a piece he’d finished writing 2 hours before it started to hit me just how special this all was.

The stage was set in the center of the room, so that people could stand all around the musicians. On the walls projections made by the visual artists played using Chinese shadow concepts. And on one side a giant screen played elements from an animation that they also created during the week. Tatsuki for his part ditched the entire 30 mins set he’d originally prepared and instead played a beautifully atmospheric 20 or so mins using sounds he’d recorded the day before and inspired by the visuals created by DEM, Will and Ericailcane: us talking, him speaking Italian, the ticks from the clock of one of the guys who runs the venue… it was incredible to hear all these sounds which I knew were ‘ours’ coming together while people stood around trying to understand what was happening. It was the perfect way to start.

2tall/Om Unit came up next, playing 20 or so minutes of new material and bringing the vibe and energy up a level, perfectly as if we’d masterminded the whole thing from start to finish. But we hadn’t, no one had heard the others’ bits, no one apart from the artists knew what would happen…

And then the final hour started and it continued to be incredible – the three of them played as if they’d known each other all their lives. The audience went crazy, the vibe was unbelievable. 10 mins before the end we were turning people away by the tens, and wondering how the hell it had all happened. Everywhere I looked people were smiling, dancing and enjoying themselves. The visual artists were more happy than I’ve seen them all week and so were the musicians.

Fast forward two hours, and we’re all sitting around coming down from the adrenaline rush and thinking back to various elements of the night. Everyone, from the artists to the organisers, the technical crew to the film crew was on a high. And everyone was responsible for the beautiful event that took place last night – everyone worked for nothing more than the want to do this, we came together as a whole in the most organic manner.

And to me, as the person who had this idea, who brought this idea to this town nearly 1 year ago to get some advice, to see the idea turn into reality like this (pretty much one year to the day since I first came up with it) is just simply incredible – tears came to me early on in the night and by the end I was just floating on a cloud, words unable to do justice to the feeling of seeing this idea birthed into reality. To know that every single person involved also felt the same is the best reward ever.

We’ve worked on this for 6 months solid, plus 6 months before of masterminding, and one week of just working non stop – and there has never been a point in all that time where someone argued or something went truly ‘wrong’. And that’s something I can’t even begin to comprehend. It gives me incredible faith that what we are building, is something that will continue to grow organically and that will hopefully be enjoyed by more and more people in the future.

For now, the best brunch in Bologna awaits me. HD video teasers of day 3 and 4 will be online by tomorrow. And full reports from the editors and artists too. And then stay tuned as we start to roll out the documentation of the project starting this month until the end of the summer.

To everyone who came last night, thank you. To everyone who took part in this, bless you.

Laurent

Videos:
Day by day HD teaser vids on Vimeo
Behind the scenes videos on Vimeo

Links:
See behind the scenes on our Tumblr – originalcultures.tumblr.com
Catch the daily blogs on our site – originalcultures.org/blogs
Catch us over at Shook Magazine on the daily too – shook.fm
Hear us tweet as we go – twitter.com/og_cultures
And don’t forget to check/add/friend/fan us on the Flickr, Facebook and Myspace.

In the morning the musicians had the last of their workshop session, using the 3 or so hours to tighten up their set as well as working with Bruno Briscik on how to bring his Cello on three of the tracks they’d already prepared. Two of them Bruno will be adding some bass, while on one of them he’ll be an integral part of the track. Bruno has a bit of a reputation round these parts for being hard to work with and bringing a certain element of jinx to shows. Seeing him connect with 2tall and Tatsuki was a real pleasure, as we all drank coffee and he reminisced about his days in New York, and seeing as he and Tayone have been working together for years the whole issue of being hard to work with never really reared its ugly head. As for the jinx though, he managed to break his wah wah pedal and blow up his amp in less than 2 hours, which didn’t surprise our resident technician Yassin who took it all with a smile, and the hope that today when it comes to the show, the same thing doesn’t happen.

Bruno Briscik meets the musicians 3 from Original Cultures on Vimeo.

By lunch time the musicians were done and we were ready to move their equipment from the workshop space to the venue (which are luckily next door to each other) and prepare for a quick soundcheck. First though was a quick lunch with a bonus chocolate ending as our local ice cream sponsor was having a chocolate day much to the pleasure of Tatsuki and 2tall who’ve been wolfing down more sugar this week than in an entire year.

Following lunch I sat down with the Slow Breakfast guys, our resident film crew, to try and figure out what was the issue with our movies not displaying properly on Vimeo. Thanks to some help from the homie Hentsix and the FAQ pages we got to the root of it and as we all sat down at Alessandro’s place to work, things started to go a little wrong – my PC overheated and refused to work, leaving with me with the only choice to cool it with a fan. At the same time the Slow Breakfast were having a nightmare figuring out how to maintain the bit rate for the videos, but after an hour or two of pulling our collective hair out it all started working again and the videos and websites were updated and working as they should have (peep the embed below)

Original Cultures Pilot video – Day 2 from Original Cultures on Vimeo.

Elsewhere in the afternoon the musicians went to do a radio interview on Citta del Capo, while the visual artists continued to work on the various elements needed for their animation and shadow based visual show. Work which even at midnight after dinner was wrapped was still ongoing (more on that in a bit). Another crucial element of the afternoon was the need for us to prepare and map out our seminar which was taking place in the evening from 7 to 9 at the Modo Infoshop, a famous bookshop in Bologna and meeting place for many of the city’s artists.

Having realised the lessons we needed to take from the seminar on the previous day we tried our best to put together a stronger approach for this seminar, deciding on precisely who would do what, when and how – give or take the unpredictable element that always comes with these things. In the end the seminar and q&a session was still a success, with a good turnout and a strong presentation of the project and feedback from the artists about their experience so far. And yet still we lapsed: we forgot to print out the questionnaires to get feedback from the public, we still didn’t quite get the translation to work as well as it could have and we also still needed to tighten up our seminar game. It’s by no means a big deal, but for me personally I now know that the biggest lesson I will take from this pilot so far is the need to really prepare and oversee the activities where the public is involved. When it comes to activities with the artists we have pretty much on lock, we’re strong in that area and we’ve only got a few small lessons to take away. When it comes to the public’s involvement though, we still have a lot to learn.

I kind of live tweeted the seminar, partly for fun and partly to further prove our point that we want to use the internet as much as possible to give people a chance to have an insight into what happens even if they’re not there.

The evening wound down with some drinks in the bar next door to Modo Infoshop, as the artists and organisers mingled with the public, friends and others. And that’s when something amazing happened. Tatsuki introduced me to a Japanese woman, Ayami, who has come all the way from London after discovering Original Cultures on the Samurai FM website. Not only that but she’d come from London with no money, and so decided to find a couch to surf on using the internet, finding herself in the house of one of the girlfriends of one of the guys who works at Modo Infoshop! They were only too happy to host her for a few days as they knew about our event. To know that someone went to that much effort to witness what we’re doing, and to know that things worked out for them as much as they’ve been working out for us, was simply incredible. She’s a big fan of all the visual artists and also Jim 2tall’s work and so we introduced her to the artists and spoke for a few hours. As Jim said afterwards, it’s not just bless, it’s a manifestation of what we’re trying to do here – bring people from different cultures and countries together under the banner of the arts, to allow them to share and experience together.

The day ended once more with an amazing dinner from Lisa, and for the first time pretty much everyone involved in the pilot was around the table: from the artists to the organisers, the film crew, the photographers, the technicians and the venue owners. To see us all there in the courtyard, drinking, eating and being merry, sharing stories and experiences, discussing the week’s event was really special for me. I know we have achieved one of our aims, especially when I think back to the fact that there hasn’t been one time this week where I haven’t bumped into one of the artists involved in the project and he hasn’t smiled at me as the first thing he did. We have brought people together and made them share something unique, through this idea of cultural exchange. We’ve allowed artists to create something they’ve never done before, to take part into an ‘experiment’ that was taking shape as it was happening, controlled by them as much as by us. And so I now know that as much as I don’t want it to end, it’s really only the beginning of something that we are all going to ensure lasts as long as possible.

I’ll leave you with some quotes and the usual links, and the knowledge that our showcase tonight will truly be something unique, never to be repeated. If you can’t be there, don’t worry we’ll have you covered in the coming weeks with videos and more. And if you can be there, then I look forward to sharing this experience with you all.

Bless.

Quotes:

It’s like Big Brother but without the bullshit and wasting time. Instead we make art on the spot.

Tayone, speaking about the documentation aspect of the Original Cultures project.

I’ve never done a collaborative project like this, it’s amazing.

Will Barras, talking about the visual arts workshops he’s been taking part in all week.

Links:
See behind the scenes on our Tumblr – originalcultures.tumblr.com
Catch the daily blogs on our site – originalcultures.org/blogs
Catch us over at Shook Magazine on the daily too – shook.fm
Hear us tweet as we go – twitter.com/og_cultures
And don’t forget to check/add/friend/fan us on the Flickr, Facebook and Myspace.

And so we continue, day 2 less coffee and cigarettes but just as much adrenaline pumping through my veins and it’s not even midday yet. I’m writing this at the start of day 3, looking back over the second day of the Original Cultures pilot, where the highs were kept and lessons were learnt.

Something ticked in my head in the morning of day 2, as I walked to the venue for more workshops. I realised that we (the organisers) had been working to ensure everything was as perfect as possible, without thinking twice about it, and yet this was still just a pilot – if things went wrong it was ok, it was ’supposed’ to happen because we were there to learn more than anything. This didn’t mean I wanted us to take it easy, but in a way it made me feel better about the possibility of things not going according to plan.

The artists meanwhile were as happy and productive as the previous day. I met up with them following their morning of workshop, where they told me that they’d managed to put together another 6 tracks in the space of 3 or so hours. Productivity is definitely the word there.

As the afternoon kicked in we continued the music workshop, and started to set up in the Spazio Si for the first open activity of the pilot, a 2h q&a/seminar session with the musicians. We fed a stream from their room into the Si, while people came in and sat down for 50 mins or so, watching and hearing what the guys were doing as they did it.

And this is when things started to deviate from the plan, and lessons started to be learnt, for me as an organiser at least. A professor of music who was supposed to come with his students could not make it at the last minute, leaving us with an audience of passers by, curious music fans and producers and DJs, I’d say about 15 people.

As I brought the musicians out to start the seminar it hit me that I should have prepared this a lot better than I did. Due to time issues, other duties and importantly my high level of tiredness I made some simple organisational mistakes when it came to moderating the panel, taking it on me to not just moderate but also translate, and within about 20 mins, my brain was so frazzled from doing it all at pretty much once that I started to slip.

In the end though the seminar was a success I think we can fairly say – the audience enjoyed it, the feedback questionnaires showing some interesting points and great reception. The artists enjoyed it and so did we, but the lesson was definitely learnt, and soon as the seminar finished I was sitting with Cristian, one of the other organizers, and discussing how to avoid these mistakes on the evening of day 3, when we do a second seminar and q&a session at the bookshop Modo Infoshop, where we will also be presenting the project to the public.

Day 2 was also the first time I got to see what the visual artists, DEM, Ericailcane and Will Barras, had been cooking up in Erica’s workshop as they set up in the Spazio Si in the evening to do some tests for the final showcase. The simple rehearsals and tests of their visual ideas left me simply speechless… and I won’t give away too much but enough to say that they’ve come up with ideas, both artistic and technical, to essentially create projections on the walls using cut out characters and a Chinese shadow technique that has been modified. And that’s just one bit of it!

Talking with them and seeing their ideas take shape was not just a pleasure but also essential to allow me to start understanding just how everything might fit together on Saturday. Talking to Will we agreed that ultimately regardless of preparations and aims, the visual and the musical will come together because they always do, and a narrative will come out of it, whether or not we aim for it (and by the way we’re not really). And beyond that, the beauty for me is that this narrative will most likely be different for everyone who witnesses the showcase.

The day wound down with another beautiful dinner courtesy of our splendid chef Lisa and some very deep and pleasant chats with 2tall, Will, Tatsuki and my homie Hentsix (who has joined us for the rest of the week) about art, culture and the internet. More on that later, maybe.

For now though I have to rush back to the Spazio Si and see how Bruno Briscik, the famed Italian multi instrumentalist, is getting on with the musicians. That’s right, we’ve managed to get him to join them for 3 tracks where he’ll be playing his cello alongside their more or less electronic compositions. I’ve already seen about 30 mins or rehearsals and discussions and I know it’s going to be something very special too. Bruno, a classically trained musician who loves to play in non classical situations, and 3 producers and DJs who are as far removed from classical training as you can imagine. Check our Tumblr and other sites for sneak peeks as it happens!

I’ll leave you for now. Be sure to check our other blogs too, and stay tuned for the last two reports of day 3 and 4 as well as more video and audio.

Bacci da Bologna!

Laurent

Links:
See behind the scenes on our Tumblr – originalcultures.tumblr.com
Catch the daily blogs on our site – originalcultures.org/blogs
Catch us over at Shook Magazine on the daily too – shook.fm
Hear us tweet as we go – twitter.com/og_cultures
And don’t forget to check/add/friend/fan us on the Flickr, Facebook and Myspace.

I’ll keep this first blog post short as I’ve still got tons to do, but to balance the input from our team of writers and some of our artists (blogs from whom you can find here in Italian for the writers and here in Japanese for the artists) here’s an overview of the first official day, and some bits from the first few days.

The mood has been high since all the artists arrived on monday evening and tuesday morning. I think it’s fair to say that the (so far) beautiful weather, the incredible food (cooked by our resident badman chef/caterer Lisa) and the historical surroundings have a lot to do with helping to elevate the mood of all involved.

The music workshops, where Tayone (from Italy), 2tall/Om Unit (from England) and Tatsuki (from Japan) are working for 3 days creating music that will be used in the final showcase on Saturday June 6th, are taking place in the Teatro San Leonardo, a building that was first a nuns’ covent, some 400 years ago. And as we sat for dinner on the Tuesday evening in the courtyard of the Teatro it somehow felt very appropriate that we would be adding our bit of history to this beautiful place.

I’ve primarily been involved in overseeing the music workshops, as I know all 3 artists personally. They are first and foremost friends, and I am a fan of theirs as much as a friend, and so to see them come together and in the space of 8 or so hours put together an already lenghty amount of music and tracks has been incredible to say the least.

Our original thoughts, as organisers, was that on Saturday the showcase, which will last 2 hours, would be composed of roughly 4 movements, 3 x 30mins of solo (one for each artist) and one collective movement of 30mins. This went out the window by the end of the first day of workshops, with Tayone explaining that he felt much happier doing as much collectively as possible. Jim 2tall and Tatsuki both agreed, and so we decided to move forward with the first hour featuring 2tall and Tatsuki doing solos (being that they are the ‘real’ guests as Tayone lived in Bologna for years) and the second hour (or more) composed of a collective movement which the guys are creating as we speak. And truth be told, this is exactly I’d hoped for originally – the reality was that I know that asking artists to put together a 2h live show is demanding a lot, and rests on a lot of factors, especially people getting on and ‘gelling’ if you will. In the end, my hopes are turning reality it seems, as the guys are more than happy to do as much together as possible, and considering we’re about 1/3 of the way through the music workshops I’d say it’s even fair to think that we’ll have a lot more than one hour of music on our hands by the end.

And so day 2 starts. Today are more music workshops, as well as a seminar/meeting/q&a session between the musicians and music students in the late afternoon. While I sit here at home, coffee-ing it up and overseeing the content output of our event, the musicians have already started and I can’t wait to see what rested minds come up with today. Tiredness set in yesterday towards the end, and as Tayone put it “the more we do, the more we have, but also the more we come up with bits that aren’t as good”. Very true, but as 2tall countered “at the end the more we have, the more we can choose from to make sure it’s outstanding”. And that kinda sums it up for me.

I’ll leave you with a few choice quotes, as well as the amazing news that Bruno Briscik, a famed Italian multi instrumentalist with whom Tayone has collaborated on many occasions, will be joining the 3 artists for a couple of featurings on the evening of Saturday.

Oh and as for the visual art workshops, featuring the amazing talents of Ericailcane, DEM and Will Barras, well I’ve not had the time to see much yet, but you can read about it in our writers blog (Italian only for now) and know that what I have seen and spoken about with them leads me to believe that saturday will be special indeed. The 3 of them, from Italy and the UK, will essentially act as directors/choreographers for the showcase, orchestrating a full live, visual show for the music being made. And so far this show includes Chinese shadows, a black box and some very spooky figurines… Considering we’d originally hoped to have them paint walls during the day, something Ericailcane and DEM are known for, to know that they’ll now be doing something pretty much no one has ever seen them do makes me only feel even better. More pics and words soon come. Stay tuned.

From Bologna, with love (and a hell of a lot of coffee).

Laurent

PS: for those interested, so far the music is ranging from slow beats to house to jazzy hip hop and abstract instrumentals. Will post audio soon as I can.

Quotes:

You try and do an event in Italy and not make it about food!

Me, in response to Mark from Skratchworx’s tweet that Original Cultures was basically just about food.

It’s a pleasure to leave the studio, go to a new country and work with new people. The inspiration is unbelievable!

Tatsuki, at the end of the first day of workshops. With some pistaccio cookies on the side.

It just keeps getting better and better!

Jim 2tall, not sure when he said that though!

Links:
See behind the scenes on our Tumblr – originalcultures.tumblr.com
Catch the daily blogs on our site – originalcultures.org/blogs
Catch us over at Shook Magazine on the daily too – shook.fm
Hear us tweet as we go – twitter.com/og_cultures
And don’t forget to check/add/friend/fan us on the Flickr, Facebook and Myspace.

2tall/Om Unit from the UK, Tatsuki from Japan and Tayone from Italy are the 3 producers who will be working together making music and preparing a live show, while Ericailcane and Dem from Italy will work with Will Barras from the UK on visual arts, including overseeing the concept for and direction of the final showcase. In between all this will be artist workshops, seminars with students, some live painting and other fun bits, check the site for full details.

Spirits are high and everyone is enjoying not just the beautiful weather but also the food, coffee and the Italian way of doing things. Already the idea of the cultural exchange is proving itself with the artists and organisers exchanging stories about their countries, customs and ways of doing things over dinner and exchanging ideas for music and visual elements.

Check the Original Cultures Tumblr blog for on the fly updates and behind the scenes looks at what happens, pretty much as it happens. Follow us on Twitter for more of the same and check back here on Shook for daily updates starting tomorrow until Sunday this week. Also peep our Flickr page and our Twitpic page for photographic updates.

Oh and for the international crew check the Original Cultures site for updates in Italian and Japanese!

Saluti da Bologna ragazzi!