Sonic Youth etc. Sensational Fix

18/JUI/08 > 07/SEP/08
SONIC YOUTH ETC.
SENSATIONAL FIX
Le Life,Base des sous-marins – Alvéole 14,Boulevard de la Légion d’Honneur, 44600 Saint-Nazaire - France
Curator: Roland Groenenboom

From Wednesday 18th of June to Saturday 7th of September 2008
OPENING Tuesday 17th of June at 8 PM
Free access

Special concert by SONIC YOUTH + Sister Iodine (June 18), Sunburned (June 17)
In partnership with LES ESCALES FESTIVAL
On Saturday of 9th August at 9.30 PM

Since Sonic Youth was formed in 1981, it has been playing a decisive part in the development of the rock scene. It appeared in the wake of a radical no wave originating from the transformations happening to the Punk legacy, and right away came across as the most inventive group of its generation. Made up of Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley, Sonic Youth today is one of the very rare groups in the history of rock to have managed to enjoy an exceptionally long shelf life combined with a consistent artistic integrity.

From their first album, Sonic Youth (1981), to their latest title, Rather Ripped (2006), they have made some 26 albums, more than 50 singles, written and performed several hundred songs, worked on the soundtracks of a dozen movies, not counting their memorable remakes—from the Stooges’ I Wanna Be Your Dog to Plastic Bertrand’s Ca plane pour moi, by way of the Beatles’ Within You Without You.
With their major trilogy—Evol (1986), followed by Sister(1987), then Daydream Nation (1988)—they have offered the history of Rock some of its most intense and decisive touchstones. Today, from concert to concert and album to album, they still have a capacity for re-invention which each time re-arouses rock lovers of all generations. Their particular politics governing their artistic choices certainly has something to do with all this. From the outset, they intentionally kept their distance from a certain type of division of labour, as they did with a certain heroic mythology of rock. No charismatic or demi-urge leader, but on the contrary the constant wager of equality. And their music profited from this.

What is less well known is that a second career is linked with this first one, and it is no less noteworthy. Sonic Youth has over time put together a veritable cluster of artists and works in most art fields. From music to movies, from performance to the plastic and visual arts, and from poetry to video, the countless joint projects they have taken on cast a remarkable light on the concept they have of their activities. From Dan Graham to Jutta Koether, Mike Kelley to Isa Genzken, Christian Marclay to Brigitte Fointaine, William Burroughs to Raymond Pettibon, Jonas Mekas to Patti Smith, Jeff Wall to Sofia Coppola, Daniel Johnston to Spike Jonze, and from Rodney Graham to Gus van Sant, the poetics of friendship that they have underwritten has revealed itself to be as fertile as it is unique in the annals of rock.

With Sonic Youth Etc – Sensational Fix, nearly three decades of joint projects lie at the root of an exhibition whose intent is to record this vast dynamic and the ideal underlying it: the ideal of a lively alternative to the logical systems of the majority, of the mass culture and of industry. As the outcome of an important international co-production supported by the LiFE of Saint-Nazaire and the MUSEION of Bolzano, this exhibition will open first at the LiFE (in partnership with Le Grand Café—Centre d’art contemporain, and Les Escales Festival), before travelling round the world. Italy first (MUSEION at Bolzano), then Germany (Kunsthalle in Dusseldorf), Sweden, Australia, the USA and Mexico. The show is being curated by Roland Groenenboom.