MUTEK Montréal through five key performances

Celebrating its 25th anniversary this August, MUTEK Montréal delivered a future-facing programme at the intersection of electronic music, visual art and tech

Anyone who has ever attended MUTEK Montréal knows this: the festival doesn’t really kick off until the early hours. Sure, there are shows before midnight on any given night during the six-day programme. But you’ll stumble across the most exploratory artists – artists combining everything from deep bass and Afro house to metal and dirty Euro techno – after the 1am mark, during the Nocturne shows.

You’ll find these performances inside the Society for Arts and Technology, commonly referred to as the SAT – a three-floored building that houses a 360-degree Satosphere dome for the heavy visual shows, as well as the ESPACE SAT, which is turned into a dimly lit techno club that runs until four or five in the morning. 

MUTEK shows are designed to be individual, once-in-a-lifetime experiences that can only witnessed in that given room. With a line-up boasting a total of 98 performances delivering just that this year, it was a fool’s errand to try to witness everything. But here are a few performances that stood out.

Eno

When director Gary Hustwit announced his generative Brian Eno documentary, Eno, the MUTEK committee knew they had to have it for their 25th anniversary. 

The screening, which took place in the Theatre Maisonneuve, was a moment to recharge from the festival’s late-night live programme. Made using generative AI – meaning that each screening is completely different – the film draws from an archive of over 500 hours of footage including Hustwit’s own conversations with Eno, never-before-seen interviews, studio sessions and old recordings. Hustwit guided the screening on stage, live mixing some of the audio and video sections including the fantastical video art of programmer Brendan Dawes, adding another element to an already unique experience. 

.WAV Studio

Another generative performance at MUTEK came from .WAV Studio – the collaboration between artist and coder Cao Yuxi and composer-sound artist Lau Hiu Kong. 

With their Palindrome Codex show, the Hong Kong-based duo pushed the boundaries of using tech in live settings and audiovisual shows. Inspired by the Sator Square – one of the first documented physical palindromes from ancient times – it explores artificial intelligence with glitchy visuals, strange geometry, and a piece of electronic chamber music. Guided by a reappearing clock, the audience time-traveled through skyscrapers, ancient cities, swirling labyrinthian staircases and other retro-futuristic decor, before a calming and contemplative finish left us thinking about the construct of time itself.

  • 'Eno' © Vivien Gaumand

  • .WAV Studio © Kinga Michalska

SEULEMENT

Performing as SEULEMENT, Montreal producer and musician Mathieu A. Seulement may have brought one of the most visually straightforward sets to MUTEK, but it’s one we can’t get out of our minds. Named Bricolage Architecture, the show utilised a healthy dose of strobed images – mostly black and white shapes – alongside modular synth swells, bleeps, bloops, and experimental sonic constructions. The off-kilter rhythms and off-beat drops were a challenging start for the Nocturne crowd, and just when the tracks seemed to become a bit more repetitive or danceable, SEULEMENT would twist them into something surreal, much like the mutating squares and cross sections on the screens. 

Amnesia Scanner & Freeka Tet

MUTEK performances are usually all about the marriage of electronic music and a rotating cast of hard-to-describe images, but STROBE.RIP – a concept by Amnesia Scanner and Freeka Tet – aimed to completely flip this concept on its head. Thanks to an indescribable amount of thick haze and sporadic strobes, save for a few remote glimpses, it was impossible to see the performers and the visuals only appeared for a few seconds at a time. 

This meant that the music was the true focus: a sinister combination of industrial, techno, ambient metal, and tons of noise. The whole performance was complete visceral carnage, a veritable storm that felt like a vicious metal show minus the mosh.

Myriam Bleau & Nien Tzu Weng 

When stepping out of a conceptual audiovisual show at MUTEK, it’s easy to be reminded of dystopian shows like Black Mirror, or sci-fi epics like Tron. Second Self – the new collaboration between Montréal-based artists Myriam Bleau and Nien Tzu Weng – was one such performance.

Using portable, interactive LED screens, Second Self explored a conversation about technology and human expression. How do you explore the self with emerging technology? Under a bed of what felt like malfunctioning modular synth sound design, the show incorporated choreographed dance as each performer moved their hands across their own and each other’s masks, revealing their true digital selves – a metaphor for our avatars online.

  • Seulement © Vivien Gaumand

  • Amnesia Scanner & Freeka Tet © Vivien Gaumand

  • Myriam Bleau & Nien Tzu Weng © Vivien Gaumand