Cinéma Dynamo
Electro-Pythagorus: A Portrait of Martin Bartlett,
2017, color, 45min.
Courtesy Luke Fowler and LUX, London
Sunday 19 January 2020
11am to 6pm
Screening every hour, on the hour
Electro-Pythagorus: A Portrait of Martin Bartlettis an homage to the British-Canadian composer and experimental electronic musicianMartin Bartlett (1939-1993). Bartlett was an innovator and researcher, who blurred the lines between music, technology, ethnography, and mysticism. Inspired by avant-garde composers like John Cage and Terry Riley, he built his own electronic instruments and was a pioneer in the use of the ‘microcomputer’ in the 1970s and 1980s. He described his handcrafted instruments as “topograph[ies] of uncertainties with which webecome acquainted through practice.” Creating one’s own instruments was, in his view, a way to reduce technological anonymity. Through archival footage, friends’ accounts and readings of Bartlett’s letters, the Glasgow-based artist Luke Fowler realizes an evocative, intimate and unique portrait of a figure that remained too little known, even in the sphere of electronic music.
By repetition,
you start noticing details
in the landscape