Concert Alexander Tucker & Fifth Continent
02.03.2023
As an echo of its Modern Nature event series, initiated with Elise Lammer in 2019 and conceived as a tribute to the artist, activist and director Derek Jarman, La Becque was proud to accompany the release of the album Fifth Continent by Alexander Tucker, who was invited to the 3rd edition of Modern Nature in 2021. Back then, the British musician’s performance at the residence was a de facto live premiere of the Fifth Continent material. We were proud to accompany the release celebrations for the completed album by proposing a new concert by Alexander Tucker and the Japanese musician Kenichi Iwasa on Thursday, March 2, 2023.
Fifth Continent pays homage to Keith Collins, longtime partner and collaborator of Derek Jarman, following Collins’ untimely death at the age of 54. Collins’ presence in the last years of Jarman’s life was essential in enabling the filmmaker to make an abundance of late works and to complete the creation of his Prospect Cottage garden on the Cape of Dungeness in Kent. After Keith Collins’ death in 2018, Alexander Tucker began developing Fifth Continent using modular synthesis to process sound archives, field recordings, and Collins’ own recordings.
The record is accompanied by the anthology Fifth Quarter: Derek Jarman, Keith Collins & Dungeness, which brings together contributions and reflections from collaborators, friends, artists, writers and musicians, including Elise Lammer and our 2021 residents Garrett Nelson and Stephen O’Malley, around the influence of Jarman and Collins, and the deep connections between art and nature.
Originally from Kent, Alexander Tucker is a multidisciplinary artist working in music, painting, comics, collage, sculpture, film and performance. Trained as a painter at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, Tucker is known for his experimental, acoustic and improvisational approach to music, combining influences ranging from folk to post-hardcore, rock and the avant-garde scene. Bridging his artistic training with his activities as a singer-songwriter and sound manipulator, Tucker has collaborated with many artists, including Stephen O’Malley, Monster Chetwynd and Daniel O’Sullivan, with whom he formed the band Grumbling Fur.
Kenichi Iwasa is a London-based improviser and multidisciplinary artist from Japan, known among other feats as the driving force behind the legendary Krautrock Karaoke event series. He has collaborated with a range of visual artists and musicians such as Beatrice Dillon, Maxwell Sterling and Linder Sterling, and many others. He currently performs with Naima Karlsson as Exotic Sin. The duo, which released its debut LP Customer’s Copy in 2020 on New York’s Blank Forms imprint, first came together for a performance celebrating the art and music of Karlsson’s grandparents, Moki and Don Cherry, before continuing as an independent unit that still incorporates some of the Cherrys’ instruments as well as their synergetic integration of music with artistic practice. Iwasa’s most recent live and studio collaborations have been with the likes of Neneh Cherry, David Ornette Cherry, Tyson, Denardo Coleman, Rebecca Salvador, Alexis Taylor, Visio, Heith, Finley Clark, Lutto Lento, and Blood Music among others.
Elise Lammer, who co-curated our event series Modern Nature: An Hommage to Derek Jarman, joined the evening’s program for an introduction to the Modern Nature project, the genesis of the record Fifth Continent and her participation in the accompanying anthology Fifth Quarter.
Strongly rooted in a dynamic questioning of experimental sound practices and their ties to notions of ecology, La Becque regularly proposes to discover contemporary approaches to sound and music through public concerts and performances.
© photos Aurélien Haslebacher