REVIEWS JO MITCHELL
JO MITCHELL: CONCERTO
FOR VOICE ampersand.cap MACHINERY II
ICA, LONDON
20 FEBRUARY
Concerto for Voice & Machinery II, 20 February 2007, Institute of Contemporary Arts,
London, live performance. Photo: © Matthias Schmidt, ICA 2007. Courtesy ICA, London
Re-enactments of historical events have become a cult form in current art. everything weirdly teeters on the edge of becoming music; you remember
Urban cultural memory, documentation’s tricky relationship with a transient why Neubauten’s post-music is still so ef_f ective, and why it was so extreme
event and the meaning of authenticity in a culture full of mediation are back then.
often its themes. And it also gives everyone an excuse to replay history After a while things lose shape and coherence, and it’s not clear
the way they want it – wish-fulfi lment as a critique of the way things have whether the gig has ended; a piano gets smashed up, and the narrative
turned out. Artist Jo Mitchell’s Concerto for Voice & Machinery II, the of an event’s disintegration becomes the event itself – one actor, as then-
re-enactment of a concert by members of the Berlin post-punk industrial ICA staf_f , remonstrates with others, in the role of then-ICA crowd, as they
band Einstürzende Neubauten at the ICA on 3 January 1984, perfectly perform the tearing up of the front of the wooden stage, while we, the
embodied the peculiar mix of unreal euphoria and sober self-refl ection now-ICA crowd, look on amused, embarrassed and uncertain of what
that lies at the heart of such impulses. we’re witnessing, and the now-ICA security guy has to step in to stop one
As a teenage fan I’d always read about this legendary gig at the of the ‘real’ audience joining in with the staged stage-smashing.
ICA, where Neubauten’s Marc Chung, Alexander Hacke, F.M. Einheit and Unexpectedly Mitchell’s Concerto was also a re-enactment of the
associates – including Genesis P-Orridge and Frank Tovey – began with ICA as it existed in 1984, played against the ICA of today, highlighting how
a musical score for drill, angle grinder, cement mixer and other tooling, and much looser and unscrutinised marginal culture could be back then, and
ended with a confused half-riot and the ICA staf_f pulling the plug on the the constraints that institutions like the ICA now have to operate within.
PA. The gig’s odd place in the band’s history is full of misapprehensions; This time, precautionary earplugs were handed out, even though the
advertised as a Neubauten concert, it turned out to have been specially sound was hardly extreme; this time, the whole event only just satisfi ed the
commissioned by the ICA from Chung. There is no fi lm or audio record of demands of Westminster City Council’s killjoy health & safety of_f_i cer; and
it, and little photographic documentation: it survives only in (contradicting) in our health-obsessed present, we walked grinning out of the gig into the
recollections. ICA’s now ice-white bar, where smoking has just been banned.
So the re-enactment is a strange experience. There’s the voodoo Towards the end, some witty member of the audience shouts,
of being in a place which has already witnessed what is about to happen. “Encore!”; the tone is self-mocking, ironic, aware of the absurdity of the
Actors walk on under bright lights, pick up various power tools. Drills howl situation. But in the same moment, the call for more is sincere and hopeful,
into concrete blocks, an arc of sparks fl ies from the grinder worrying a metal knowing that if such a moment of avant-garde elation happened once, it
rail; it’s loud, impressive and random. Then a road-pounder is started up, could happen again; even in these culturally soporifi c and straitened times.
its huge bass rhythm putting the other noises into a sort of structure, and J.J. Charlesworth
ARTREVIEW one.lintwo.lineight.lin
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