Jean-Luc Guionnet interviewing Diego Chamy
When Jean-Luc Guionnet was working a book of interviews with people that play (or played, in my case) improvised music, we met for a chat. That was Berlin, June 2009. He later sent me the following questions by email:
How do you relate your actual work with improvisation as a practice / technique?
Improvisation can be present in my actual work discursively (because I might talk openly about it during a performance) or in practice (because I might work with musicians that improvise during the performances). But lately I myself improvise very little. I do it only when there is a specific situation where improvisation can be somehow helpful, but nowadays for me improvisation is just a resource among many others. If I myself need to improvise, then it’s always something very local and defined and it will have a clear purpose within a piece; it wouldn’t be considered "free improvisation". In any case, it’s true that free improvisation left a strong mark on me because it’s something that I used to do for several years. Recently I’ve been criticized for being too dependent on the improvised music scene in order to make my pieces. However, I think that when you produce something you have to lean on your own experiences and on your own life; and improvised music was a big part of my life, so I don’t see any problem in using it or even in needing it, if I manage to do something interesting with it. When I hear someone saying that I am too dependent on improvised music I feel that what this person is really trying to do is not to criticize me but to slightly push me out of the scene. Eventually I will probably leave by choice, so there is no need to push me out.
The question of power/strength/being stronger than... is like remaining in what you say. Do you relate it to what happen in a "collective" improvisation?
Force and power relations are everywhere, and a collective improvisation is no exception. One can see all kinds of power relations in a collective improvisation. The problem is that, among improvisers, these relations are mostly seen as negative. Many musicians believe that they must achieve a kind of balance of forces when they play together; but this balance is impossible to achieve: force relations are by nature unbalanced. Besides, the attempts to approach balance go directly against music: if there would be a balance, the music wouldn’t have any life and there wouldn’t be any reason to start playing. In fact one is driven to play by this unbalance and should try to affirm it and to make it even more unequal.
When I speak about force relations in a collective improvisation, I’m not speaking about a fight among musicians. On the contrary, once there is a fight, the stronger forces have already lost. This is important to mention because there’s a lot of confusion about the matter. Once someone told me, after an improvisation, that I was being too dominant. How can someone possibly be "too" dominant? You’re never dominant enough! Improvised music as a mechanism always defends the weaker, but in fact, it’s the stronger ones who should be defended from the weaker.
Very little has been said about what part power takes in improvised music.
Did you learn how to perform by having previously being an improviser?
I don’t know if I have "learned how to perform" and I don’t think I have any interest in learning it. But in any case, I don’t think that being an improviser has helped me much. On the contrary, I was only starting to think seriously about performing and making actions the moment I forgot about improvising (for me improvised music was - and still is - like a black hole it’s difficult to get out of).
Some people tell me that it’s easy for me to do what I do in the improvised music scene, but that in the performance scene my work would be considered not relevant or old. The thing is that, contrary to general opinion, I don’t see performance art as a discipline. That’s why I’m not interested in going into the performance scene. I do it every once in a while, but for me to perform is to make something happen - it doesn’t matter where; and the performance scene is one of the environments where less can happen: it was created in order to give a predefined limit to actions that were getting out of control. Therefore, if you accept to be within this limit, you already deprive your actions of their own potency because within this limit there is already no reason for anything to happen. It’s like condemning your actions to failure before taking them. Moreover, this also means to accept your actions as part of a defined discipline. And I don’t think of what I do as part of a discipline. I have no interest in producing performances. I have no interest in succeeding as a professional performer or standing out among performers, but to find a place where I can produce actions that wouldn’t be completely under control. I don’t have any special respect for the performance scene. I can hardly remember performances that were interesting to me.
Was/is improvisation a goal or a technique?
Improvisation was definitively not a goal. The goal for me was to make good music and affect somehow the world with it. Now I don’t even care if I do it with music or anything else - my aim is to affect the world in a certain way, regardless how. But improvisation is not a technique either. A technique is something that you should be able to learn, at least to a certain degree. Free improvisation is something too vague and general to be learned as a technique. It’s just a way of making music among many others - and, at the end of the day, a fetish.
How has being from Argentina is influencing and informing your work?
In the past I always tried to hide any aspect in my work that could be related to Argentina. This happened for different reasons: firstly, because the typical Argentinean character or stereotype is just disgusting to me; secondly, because I felt that the music had to come from somewhere else: a kind of exteriority that has nothing to do with the place you come from; and third, because in Argentina I always felt like a foreigner. Despite having lived in Buenos Aires my whole life until I was 30, I never got used to how things work over there. So I had good reasons to reject any possible Argentinean aspect in my work. However, nowadays I’m more open to it. Lately I tend to think that one has to work starting from his/her own experiences (something very simple but that I refused to do in the past), and that’s why for a couple of years I’ve been recovering some of the Argentinean traits. I still feel a strong sense of rejection for all that, but I don’t reject it anymore.
Argentineans are usually portrayed as egocentric, loudmouthed, individualistic, selfish, arrogant, too proud, hypocritical, liars, snobs, ridiculous and narcissistic people (all this because of well-grounded reasons, I have to say). Lately I’m taking some of these traits as material - as neutral impersonal colors that I can legitimately make use of in a performance because I’m very familiar with them. The funny thing is that, since these traits go against the ideas that improvisation, as a practice, supposedly promotes (collaboration, humbleness, altruism, etc.), many people in the scene take them badly because they cannot differentiate between me and the material in my work. In this scene, there is no distinction between what you do on stage and what you do off stage: many musicians feel that their music is an expression of who they are, etc. In my case, I see my work as something very separate from my own life. It’s like another life within my life - a place where I don’t recognize myself. I can work with material that has surrounded me my whole life; and I hope I’m doing it in a way that they will have a positive effect on the world. Nevertheless, I don’t confuse myself with my work (which doesn’t mean that I don’t stand behind it or that I make a distinction work/life). I just make use of my work. I call for pragmatism in art. And free improvisation is one of the furthest points from pragmatism you can get. Sometimes it can be useful in order to think over certain things, but I feel it can be very limited.
I think that being from a third world country like Argentina also gives me a kind of inner restlessness, though curiously, I’m a very calm person most of the time.
Diego Chamy, Berlin, July 2009