Multidisciplinary artists James K, Heith, Günseli Yalcinkaya and Andrea Belosi on their surreal new live show, The Talk

Commissioned by TIMES, ‘The Talk’ explores the ways in which narratives, as told through the lens of various technologies, shape our perception of reality.

Four artists – each one with a practice distinct from the others – will take to various European festival stages across summer to deliver a talk. That doesn’t sound too left of field: nowadays, it’s commonplace for festival programmes to include discourse – panel discussions, lectures, debates which offer multiple perspectives on themes relevant to music in some way. But this talk, The Talk, works within the format to present something totally unexpected. 

The Talk, created by Milanese PAN signee Heith, NYC audio-visual polymath James K, London-based artist-researcher Günseli Yalcinkaya and Berlin architect Andrea Belosi is a commission from TIMES (The Independent Movement for Electronic Scenes) –  an EU-funded cultural collaborative project bringing together 10 European festivals that sees practitioners collaborate across borders and disciplines, culminating in multiple shows: in the case of this project, at Nuits Sonores, Reworks and Terraforma. 

Over the course of three residencies and the remote work that followed, the artists behind The Talk developed a concept which explores our perception of reality through the lens of technology. They take the act of grounding themes in the reality of lived experience – the essence of most panel talks – to the point of surrealism. Shoegaze pop ballads, hypnotic soundscapes, spoken word intervals and real time-manipulated video shape our understanding of its narrative, towing the line between aesthetic truths and fiction. 

We spoke to the collaborators ahead of its premiere on 29 May at Lyon’s Nuits Sonores about why this theme is so relevant now, and what they’ve learned in the process.

What made you land on this theme?

Günseli Yalcinkaya: We have a shared interest in reality constructs. During our first residency in Greece, we encountered the Antikythera which became a jumping off point for discussing what constitutes our perception of reality, and how technology acts as a fictioning tool. 

Heith: The Antikythera was discovered at the beginning of the 20th century, and is considered to be the oldest example of an analogue computer. First, they thought it was some kind of calendar, but that perception changed through time as scientists kept giving different explanations. It made us think about how different realities are constructed through narrative and how truth is temporary and changes through the ages.

Why did you choose the format of a panel talk?

Heith: We thought it was interesting to combine the aesthetic of a panel talk together with a live music performance, because it subverts people’s perception, and questions what constitutes a stage show nowadays.

Andrea Belosi: The title The Talk raised some concerns with festival organisers because it looked confusing on the programme. But really, that was our objective.

James K: Also, it’s hybrid because that’s what we’re used to. Respectively, we’ve all worked with multimedia, so it made sense.

Günseli: Yeah, it’s a kind of remixed format which represents the flattening of culture that we see now. Nothing is just a music show or a fashion show anymore. Everything’s an all-in-one.

Artificial Intelligence is the most obvious example of a recent technological advancement interacting with our sense of perception and truth. How does it feature in The Talk?

Heith: We worked with the creative technologist Luca Cingolani in order to develop a custom AI tool which works in real time through a live feedback camera operated on stage by Moritz Freudenberg, so rather than creating content pre-production, everything will be run live and processed through varying degrees of effects which will filter how the audience experiences the show. In this context AI doesn’t create content from scratch, but manipulates a reality that’s already there. It’s unusual because typically you would feed it as much information as possible in order to optimise it, but in this case, we had to find ways to limit it.

Günseli: This performance does feature AI, but it isn’t an ‘AI project’. It’s just another technology we’ve used. It’s particularly interesting, I guess, because of its time-warping capabilities. With AI, our perception of the past, present and future doesn’t really add up, so it’s a carrier of perception itself. I also personally really like the non-human aspect of it. It poses an existential threat by its outsiderness. 

Having spent a lot of time researching and interacting with AI over the course of this project, are you more scared or excited by how we’re seeing it interact with creative practice?

James K: I don’t think it’s a threat to art at all, actually. For me, art and music are about communicating something and provoking thought. Of course, it’s a threat to certain jobs out there, but I think artists will ultimately see it just as another tool that’s out there. Here, it’s a tool to make commentary on a certain topic and to show the richness of the concepts that surround it.

Günseli: With AI, you need to actively fight against the mid-ness of it all. Like, it’s literally made to be mid, right? It’s the average medium of everything on the internet, especially if you use a standard text-to-image processor. In order to create something genuinely unique, it takes a lot of work and creativity.

Heith: We’re neither tech utopian or doomer, AI has interesting potential but it’s also undeniably scary in the context of governance and Big Data corporations.

What value did working interdisciplinarily add to the project?

Heith: Working with someone who has a different practice from you shows you a different perspective on your work and allows you to go in directions that you would never think of. For example, creating a script in accordance with a musical timeline was something I’ve never done before, this feels very unique because you would usually do the opposite.

Andrea: Yeah, I think we all learned from the idea that a music show could also have an element of dramaturgy and could be connected to performers on stage. Also, everything will be recorded through the lens of a camera, which means there’s a cinematography and direction of photography aspect to the show. Each element adds another layer to the performance, which I’ve found very interesting.