Art Abscons

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Art Abscon appearing live at the Rauhnacht Festival on New Year's Eve 2011 in Leipzig.

ART ABSCONs is a German psychedelic music project. It is led by the artificial character Art Abscon .

concept

The project is based on an art concept according to which the artist sees himself purely as a medium and therefore remains anonymous. Art Abscon's real name, place of residence and origin were kept secret for a long time. At concerts and in pictures, the artist appears exclusively with a mask . It is now known that the musician and music producer Michael Tellbach is behind ART ABSCONs: "But that is even more secret. All I can say for now is that Michael, the man behind the Grandmaster's mask, will soon present his own music project , which will be very different from ART ABSCONs. Look out for a guy called Tellbach. " He is also the owner of the label "Opus Abscondi":

The name

The name ART ABSCONs is ambiguous: The first component "ART" can be interpreted as a first name as well as a reference to art, from French "art" = " art ". The French word "abscons" means something like "not to be understood", which results in "incomprehensible art". The word comes from the Latin term "absconditus" = "hidden". A small town in northern France owes its name Abscon to this word meaning . According to tradition, the Romans found a place abandoned by the Gauls in a forest in what is now the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region . Since this was protected and hidden by the forest, the Romans built a secret base there and called it Abscondinium . The artist takes up the name Abscondinium in his lyrics and sees it as a kind of metaphysical “realm of art”.

Mystical associations also arise from the term deus absconditus . This term is mentioned in Isaiah 45.15 and says that God cannot be recognized in principle. According to the Gnostic view of the world, this God is even outside of creation. It forms the unknowable and incomprehensible highest principle. This is not to be confused with the Demiurge , the Creator God, who brought the world of appearances into existence imperfectly and flawedly. According to the Gnostic understanding, the Deus absconditus only reveals itself in the human mind and should therefore be equated with perfect knowledge, with Gnosis itself. The creation, however, hides this divine core like a mask. It is the same with Art Abscon: the artist's work, his creation, hides him, so it is his mask.

The art theory

At ART ABSCONs, the concept of the masked artist goes hand in hand with an art theory according to which the artist is only a medium and has no originality of its own. The person Michael receives the inspiration of the mystical "Grand Master" Art Abscon according to his own statements in dreams. In an interview with the webzine Cvlt Nation , he even explicitly opposed the concept of copyright and intellectual property ; for, according to its interpretation, artists cannot claim ownership of ideas that they have received from a supra-personal principle.

Cooperations

ART ABSCONs work closely with the American band Gnomonclast . Both music projects support each other on studio albums. In addition, there were three joint live performances: on September 25, 2010 in Prague, Czech Republic, on July 16, 2011 in San Dona di Piave, Italy, on May 27, 2012 at the Wave-Gothic-Treffen in Leipzig, Germany , and on October 11, 2013 in Copenhagen, Denmark. What stands out in both music projects is how they deal with the leitmotif of time . In their understanding, time appears as a hostile force that is overcome in art. The goal of development is evidently the complete dissolution of time; that's how it sounds in lyrics like "Time is dead".

The music

Musically, ART ABSCONs offers very differently presented melodies that are on. Above all, acoustic instruments are used, which the artist Art Abscon claims to record himself in most cases. The tonal repertoire is supplemented by various noises, field recordings , but also electronically generated sounds and samples . The artist claims to have invented an instrument called the “spectralophone”, the exact functionality of which he keeps secret. In his music he repeatedly quotes Neofolk topoi , which are alienated and placed in a new context, thus pointing beyond the genre in an avant-garde manner.

Discography

Albums

  • 2009. Spectral Magic (download; ParaLucid)
  • 2010. In the sky with fire (CD; Dead Scarlet Records)
  • 2010. The Hidden God (Vinyl; Blind Prophet Records)
  • 2011. The Hidden God (CD; Hau Jerk!)
  • 2011. In the sky with fire (vinyl; Fronte Nordico)
  • 2012. Les Sentiers Éternels (vinyl; Fronte Nordico)
  • 2013. In the sky with fire II (CD; Fronte Nordico)
  • 2013. Les Sentiers Éternels (vinyl; Fronte Nordico)
  • 2012. Vita Abscondi (MC; Brave Mysteries)
  • 2014. Traveling with Ukulele (download)
  • 2016. Five songs (download)
  • 2016. Grand Master On Grand Piano: Art Abscons Plays Erik Satie (download)
  • 2016. The Lost Tape (MC; Opus Abscondi)

EPs

  • 2011. October 31st EP (Vinyl; Vade Retro Records)

Split albums

  • 2010. Split with Gabe balance wheel (CDr; SkullLine)
  • 2011. Split with Lufwaffe / Gnomonclast (CDr; Old Europa Cafe)
  • 2014. Song of Hate + Hate with Gnomonclast (CD; Old Europa Cafe)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.cvltnation.com/an-exclusive-interview-with-neofolk-musician-art-abscons-by-oliver-sheppard/ - "I use“ Art Abscon ”to refer to Art as a person and“ ART ABSCONs "if I speak of the" art project "that sometimes involves more artists than just myself." - Quote from the Cvlt Nation interview
  2. ↑ http://www.cvltnation.com/an-exclusive-interview-with-neofolk-musician-art-abscons-by-oliver-sheppard/ - "There is great magic in masks. When you hide an individual's face behind a mask, you deprive this person of everything that makes it unique; you dissolve its identity and replace it by something universal. That was the main idea when I decided that I needed a mask in order to impersonate the being who is responsible for the songs I receive for the purpose of ART ABSCONs. " - Quote from the Cvlt Nation interview
  3. ↑ http://www.nonpop.de/nonpop/index.php?nav=1&area=1&p=articles&action=showdetails&id=2021&artpage=2&type=special - "The person behind this mask is nobody special. He's neither particularly pretty, nor particularly ugly, neither particularly educated nor particularly uneducated, etc. He is in his mid-thirties and otherwise doesn't really have any interesting qualities. The mask indicates that as a person he deserves no credit to ART ABSCON's work. " - Quote from the nonpop interview, p. 2
  4. ↑ https://artabscons.com/
  5. ↑ http://webshop.opusabscondi.de/epages/es413382.sf/de_DE/?ObjectPath=Categories
  6. ↑ a b THE HIDDEN GOD ( Memento from March 3, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) - See the lyrics of the song The Abandoned Grove
  7. ↑ http://www.nonpop.de/nonpop/index.php?nav=1&area=1&p=articles&action=showdetails&id=2021&artpage=2&type=special - "An artist is just someone who is haunted by ideas that come from outside pour into him. " - Quote from the nonpop interview p. 2
  8. ↑ http://www.nonpop.de/nonpop/index.php?nav=1&area=1&p=articles&action=showdetails&id=2021&artpage=2&type=special - "He plays his music to me in dreams, he dictates his poetry to me in sudden Epiphany, he lets me find and discover things that serve his purposes, he drives into my body when I wear his mask. " - Quote from the nonpop interview, p. 2
  9. ↑ http://www.cvltnation.com/an-exclusive-interview-with-neofolk-musician-art-abscons-by-oliver-sheppard/ - "The ideas that inspire a true artist do not BELONG to the particular individual who receives them, but to a realm beyond the concept of individuality. There is no such thing as intellectual property in the realm of ideas, and I abhor so-called “artists” who think in terms of copyright, etc. These people are no real artists. Sometimes their work might be pleasing or even entertaining, but there is no truth in it. The origin of artistic inspiration is otherworldly, even divine, and contradicts self-serving notions of property and ownership. " - Quote from the Cvlt Nation interview
  10. ↑ TIME IS DEAD ( Memento from March 3, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  11. ↑ http://www.nonpop.de/nonpop/index.php?nav=1&area=1&p=articles&action=showdetails&id=2021&artpage=2&type=special - "Except for my collaboration with various artists like GNOMONCLAST, I have all the instruments on the albums played by ART ABSCONs themselves ". - Quote from the nonpop interview, p. 2
  12. ↑ http://artabscons.bandcamp.com/album/les-sentiers-ternels-cd-out-now - "LSE is the first ART ABSCONs album to feature the SPEKTRALOPHONE, a sort of organic synthesizer developed by Art Abscon himself." - Text excerpt from the blurb of the album Les Sentiers Éternels
  13. ↑ See song text Rune ; http://www.nonpop.de/nonpop/index.php?nav=1&area=1&p=articles&action=showdetails&id=2021&artpage=2&type=special - "You sometimes seem to play with Neofolk subjects. For example," The hidden one God "one of your songs" rune ". It turns out to be - in my ears - a love song that has absolutely nothing to do with runes." - Nonpop editor Michael We. as an introduction to a question