Artist Statement

Performance

MECANIUM (since 1977) :
A sixty-pieces orchestra made of Meccano parts, electro-motors and acoustic instruments from all over the world. According to the type of instrument that is included, each automaton plays a short melody, a rhythm or some harmony repeated in a loop. (source: https://www.pierrebastien.com/en/installations.php)

Bastien has composed music for Dominique Bagouet’s ballets, and it was for his Tartine production that he made his first musical machine, combining a record-playing engine, a Meccano structure and a cymbal. The products of a strange cross between modern technology and ethnic folklore, his works are reminiscent of futurist primitivism and dadaism. In the words of Marc Gabriel Malfant, the music of Pierre Bastien has also rediscovered the pure charm of ‘air’ or tune, the easy-to-whistle-to genre pursued by une, the easy-to-whistle-to genre pursued by Bach that has disappeared from the musical vocabulary.

We enter, through music, into a forgotten world where tired machines slowly and obstinately repeat coagulated tunes. The tempo is heavy, decomposed. In this nocturnal milieu, the apparitions have the mysterious walk of the ghosts and their power of fascination. These ‘airs’ have the elegance of a remembrance… And sometimes, we surprise ourselves whistling a melody of Pierre Bastien while we maintain fixed in our memory the sorrowful calm of Marimba Combo’s cornet.

Video of comparable piece called Mecanoid:

• Pierre Bastien, (born Paris, France, 1953) post-graduated in eighteenth-century French literature at University Paris-Sorbonne. In 1977 he built his first musical machinery. For the next ten years he has been composing for dance companies and playing with Pascal Comelade. In the meantime he was constantly developing his mechanical orchestra. Since 1987 he concentrates on it through solo performances, sound installations, recordings and collaborations with such artists as Pierrick Sorin, Karel Doing, Jean Weinfeld, Robert Wyatt or Issey Miyake. https://www.pierrebastien.com