In conversation with ‘A FORBIDDEN DISTANCE’ – Berlin Atonal: OPENLESS 2024

RS – Thank you ! Nice to know you’ve enjoyed Tutto Questo Sentire’s performance in Milan. I have been working with TQS for ten years now and it definitely affected the way I approach film within the context of live performance. The Collaboration with Mohammad, Mehdi, and Ian was born from the intuition of  ATONAL’s team in collaboration with Times Movement. I had worked with ATONAL for the “Tresor 31 | Techno, Berlin und die große Freiheit” exhibition in 2022, editing 30 years of archive material on the club … and in general feel very connected to intimacy and archive … so I think there was an association there when Saint Abdullah mentioned his family archive as a possible part of the show. Working together has been special in ways I am still processing.

M&M – Well I suppose our lives have been marked by class / migrant struggles.  Sometimes I wish we didn’t have to talk about it. Or that we could ourselves move on. Our good friend and artist Abbas Zahedi messaged me this morning, and the co-reflection was around: can’t we just move on from this? At this age, with all this life lived in the west, do we still need to speak about displacement? It also has this weird connotation, the assumption that we cannot ever quite belong. Whereas I like to think we can. We do. This is full-of-hope storytelling.  

How much of this is about my change in relation to the world—and how much of it is about the world changing in relation to me? When I was in my 20s going out to bars in brooklyn, women wouldn’t believe that my name was Mohammad. You couldn’t possibly be a Mohammad. What is a Mohammad? What way should a Mohammad behave? I’d have to pull out my ID and show them that indeed I was a Mohammad. This was particularly true because they assumed I was Israeli. I get that a lot. 

So maybe displacement is the inability to meet defined expectations of who we ought to be. Can a chameleon ever be displaced?

Ian – it’s funny my beats often get described as rubbery! They often get likened to objects and textures, which is something I do myself. Metallic beats. Woody beats. I like that. I strive for textural interest in my sounds, I want them to be organic and alive. I think that’s where they merge with what Moh and Mehdi are doing. They take a similar approach. There’s a rawness there, a sense of things needing to breathe and an aliveness. Once the sound worlds connect like this the tracks can go anywhere.

M&M – The merging happens, or it doesn’t happen. Meaning, it is not assumed that it will happen. It’s a trial, an experimentation-exploration, a mad effort. We’re at this place with Ian that I think we can create anything we want. And so then it becomes about the choices in aesthetic, in storytelling, and technique. Each song is a universe unto its own. Merging is a trial & error, until we feel like the song is effectively served the necessary ingredients. We’re in service of the tune. The tune is the guide, and we’re just trying to let the ingredients flow through us.

Ian – I’ve been there twice. Once as an audience member and once as a performer (as Lakker, in 2015). That show was a real highlight. The space, the crowd, everything came together. I’m looking forward to being back there.

M&M – We’ve never been, and didn’t know a lot about it tbh. Felt so far away. 

RS – This is my third time being involved and it has always been very special in different ways. 

Ian – it is a brand new show, created especially for OPENLESS. Rebecca has made a new film and we are building and structuring sound and music around that film. Instead of a traditional soundtrack though, the music / sound and video elements will interact and speak to each other. It is not visuals accompanying music nor is it music accompanying a film. It is kind of like an abstracted conversation that we will perform together that tells a multi-layered story. 

M&M – Hrmmm, it’s vulnerable, it’s honest, it’s transparent. It seeks no answers, it is reflection. 

Ian – after OPENLESS we will perform it at Unsound and Semibreve in October and Sonar next June. We’re talking about doing more too.

M&M – Inshallah everywhere