The genre-morphing, musico-cinematic ensemble Metamkine arrives from France fully amped for their latest “film live” performance piece. Presented by the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) in partnership with Anthology Film Archives, the event is part of FIAF’s Crossing the Line 2009 festival, celebrating French and American artists working to transform cultural practices on both sides of the Atlantic.

Through the magic of mirrors, multiple projectors, and highly ingenious live on-stage editing, the Grenoble-based multimedia trio (known in French as La Cellule d’Intervention Metamkine) produces and directs a new film live with each of their performances. Musician Jérôme Noetinger collaborates with filmmakers Christophe Auger and Xavier Quérel to create a series of situational vignettes accompanied by a live soundtrack of tape fragments and analog synthesizer sounds.

A sensory immersion that must be experienced to be believed, Metamkine’s self-termed “musico-cinematic” creations explore the relationship between image and sound, resulting in work that is at once a performance and its document. Appearing in a posture reminiscent of a band before the film screen, Metamkine aims to liberate music from the servitude of cinema, and the important moment becomes the confrontation on stage.

“Metamkine create a completely irreproducible, ingenious live cinema experience that cannot be contained on a DVD, and which barely fits in a theater,” said Andrew Lampert of Anthology Film Archives. “Working with an army of 16mm projectors, analog sound equipment, large mirrors and jerry-rigged doodads, Metamkine manages to construct something spectacular from the most unlikely of sources. Abstract yet concrete, as aggressive as it is lulling, a performance by Metamkine lives and grows in the memory long after the show has ended.”

“An event both anachronistic and futuristic,” said Simon Dove, Crossing the Line co-curator. “Metamkine use all manner of old analogue sound and film projectors to propose an exhilarating future for both concert and cinema,” added Lili Chopra, Artistic Director of FIAF.


About Metamkine
La Cellule d'Intervention METAMKINE is an open-ended group including musicians and filmmakers researching the dynamic between image and sound. Founded in 1987 by musician Jérôme Noetinger and filmmakers Christophe Auger and Xavier Quérel, Metamkine’s concepts have been carried out and performed in festivals, galleries, rock clubs, cinemas, and contemporary art spaces, in France, Europe, Canada, and the US. Since 1995, they have developed collaborations with other groups or artists like Nachtluft (Switzerland), Kinobits (France), Loophole Cinema (England), Tom Cora (USA), Le Cube (France), la Flibuste (France), and Voice Crack (Switzerland).