document imprimable

La Cellule d'Intervention Metamkine est formée de Christophe Auger, Xavier Quérel et Jérôme Noetinger. Leurs performances allient projections 16mm et musique électroacoustique, dans la grande tradition du "cinéma élargi". Depuis 1987, ils ont présenté leur travail dans plusieurs festivals, cinémas, galeries et espaces indépendants, en France, Europe, Canada, Etats-Unis, Japon, Corée et Australie. Ils ont également développé des collaborations avec d'autres groupes comme Nachtluft, Voice Crack, Kinobits, Loophole Cinema, Tom Cora, La Flibuste ou Le Cube (avec Gaëlle Rouard, Etienne Caire, Christophe Cardoen et Lionel Marchetti).

Le musicien et les cinéastes sont sur scène, faisant face au public. Deux miroirs installés dans la salle reflètent les images sur un écran placé derrière eux. Sons et images sont travaillés en direct. La Cellule d'Intervention développe une idée de jeu entre image et son, le projecteur cinéma étant un instrument comme le magnétophone à bandes par exemple. Du cinéma pour les oreilles, de la musique pour les yeux.

"Il y a chez Metamkine quelque chose de l'ordre de la saturation, de l'inflation, de la surenchère, bref de l'hallucination." Jean-Yves Barbichon
"Metamkine nous offre l'expérience rare d'une musique libérée de toute servitude par rapport au cinéma, un cinéma live projeté comme de la musique, avec des projectionnistes qui manifestent une spontanéité d'instrumentistes". Tom Cora
"Comme moi, ils ne cherchent pas à fonctionner en autarcie mais à minimiser leur dépendance. En manipulant les matériaux, les projecteurs, les morceaux de pellicule, ils pratiquent une forme d'engagement à la fois très nouvelle et en rapport avec la scène alternative américaine des années 60. J'aime leur violence, l'énergie qu'ils déploient pour cela, ce mélange d'amour pour les choses du cinéma et de mépris pour ce qu'il est devenu". Robert Kramer

Christophe Auger & Xavier Quérel, projecteurs cinéma. Jérôme Noetinger, dispositif électroacoustique.

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Christophe AUGER. Né en 1966. Vit à Cras (38). Etudes de lettres de 1986 à 1988. Technicien de laboratoire photographique professionnel de 1989 à 1995. Photographie expérimentale depuis 1986, formation autodidacte: affiches, pochettes de disques, press-book et expositions. Membre de Art Toung! (programmation de cinéma expérimental au 102, rue d'Alembert à Grenoble) de 1990 à 1995. Depuis 1988, réalise des films expérimentaux en super 8 et 16mm, membre fondateur de la Cellule d'Intervention METAMKINE, performance film & musique en direct. Participe à divers workshops ou stage de formation cinéma pour enfants et adultes. Membre fondateur des "Ateliers MTK", laboratoire cinématographique artisanal à Grenoble de 1992 à 1998. Co-fondateur, en 1999 de l'Atelier "Ad libitum", consacré à la  restauration de films expérimentaux et à la recherche sur l'image et le son. Depuis 1995, participe régulièrement à des rencontres improvisées film et musique, membre du “Cube”, installation cinémusiq performance. Depuis 2001, membre du groupe ZUR, qui réalise des installations spectacles ciné-matos-graphique, membre du groupe Mody Bleach, performance film & musique en directe. Depuis 2003, membre du groupe Projos Quartet, performance film en direct.

Xavier QUÉREL, né en 1966, vit à Grenoble. Après avoir obtenu son baccalauréat (construction mécanique) dans une petite station de ski des Alpes, il s'installe à Grenoble pour étudier les sciences économiques à l'université. Il découvre alors les performances de Metamkine et se lie d'amitié avec eux. Il voit quelques films de Man Ray et Patrick Bokanowski qui le fascinent... et fréquente "le 102", un squat qui organise des concerts de musique inclassable. Depuis cette époque (1988/90), il s'active dans différents domaines du cinéma expérimental :
Pratique de l'improvisation en utilisant la projection cinéma (16mm, super8) et la lumière. Principalement avec "la Cellule d'intervention METAMKINE", performances film / musique. "METAMKINE" a joué dans l'Europe entière, en Amérique du Nord et au Japon.  Dans différents autres projets aussi: "Maki" spectacle d'ombres avec lequel il voyage régulièrement au Mali et Sénégal, un solo avec un projecteur 16mm, "Et/Ou" danse-musique-cinéma-lumière, "le Cube" performance film/musique de 12h à l'intérieur d'un cube d'écran...
Mise en place et gestion d'un laboratoire de cinéma artisanal: "l'Atelier MTK", où il est possible de tout faire soimême : prise de vue, développement, tirage de copie, trucages... montage en pellicule 16mm et super8. Anime de nombreux atelier de pratique du cinéma artisanal en école primaire, universités, écoles d'art ou de cinéma.
Participation active à la vie d'un lieu autogéré: "le 102", où sont organisés projections de cinéma expérimental, performances, concerts de musique improvisée/expérimentale, débats...

Jérôme NOETINGER. Né en 1966.
Membre fondateur de la Cellule d'Intervention Metamkine.
Dirige le catalogue de vente par correspondance Metamkine spécialisé dans les musiques électroacoustiques et improvisées.
Rédacteur en chef du magazine trimestriel Revue & Corrigée jusqu'en 2014.
Membre actif du 102 à Grenoble de 1987 à 1997.
Compose des musiques concrètes en studio.
Travaille sur scène en solo ou accompagné avec un dispositif électroacoustique regroupant magnétophones à bande, table de mixage, synthétiseurs analogiques, effets, micros-contacts, hauts-parleurs, lecteurs CD et K7…
Réalise également des conférences, des animations ou des ateliers…
Joue ou a joué avec Sophie Agnel, Aude Romary, Angelica Castello, Thomas Lehn, Lionel Marchetti, David Chiesa, Will Guthrie, eRikm, Jean-Philippe Gross, Daunik Lazro, Arnaud Rivière, Sébastien Cirotteau, Christian Pruvost, MIMEO, Quintet Avant, Thymolphthalein…

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"La Cellule d'Intervention Metamkine est formée de Christophe Auger, Xavier Quérel et Jérôme Noetinger. Leurs performances allient projections 16mm et super 8 et musique électroacoustique, dans la grande tradition du "cinéma élargi" et d'un médium cinématographique sculptural (qui n'est pas sans rappeler leurs ancêtres psychédéliques, Ben Van Meter, Andy Warhol et son Exploding Plastic Inevitable). Ils travaillent "au corps" un matériau composé de sons et d'images hétéroclites, parfois trouvés (found footage) ou volés. Sans doute font-ils partie de cette génération d'artistes, aussi bien présents dans le domaine de la musique que des arts visuels, qui se sont donnés pour tâche d'investir totalement leur médium, de le rendre malléable (et expressif) au possible. Il y a chez Metamkine quelque chose de l'ordre de la saturation, de l'inflation, de la surenchère, bref de l'hallucination. Mais ils parviennent toujours à déjouer, parfois avec humour, toute interprétation ou comparaison hâtive. Leurs interventions ne constituent ni une déconstruction manichéenne (ou conceptuelle) du médium audiovisuel, ni une expérience post-psychédélique, ni même une dérive purement plastique du cinéma expérimental."
Jean-Yves Barbichon, Nov'Art n°11, juillet-août 1993.

"Pour bien comprendre Metamkine, il me semble qu'il faut les replacer dans leur environnement culturel et artistique. Par Jérôme Noetinger, Metamkine est aussi un label et un distributeur de disques de référence dans le monde des musiques nouvelles. Revue & Corrigée, l'un des meilleurs magazines dédiés aux musiques dites nouvelles et expérimentales est porté par le même Jérôme. Metamkine, c'est aussi les membres piliers de Art Toung !, l'association programmatrice de cinéma expérimental et de concerts au 102, lieu culturel indépendant, autofinancé et incontournable de Grenoble. Et derrière les deux cinéastes se cache le labo MTK qui permet aux "amateurs" de réaliser eux-mêmes les étapes si importantes du développement et du tripatouillement chimique de l'émulsion cinématographique. C'est ce même labo MTK qui est à l'origine de la dynamique qui se crée en France depuis plus d'un an chez les cinéastes pour concrétiser d'autres laboratoires de ce type.
[…]
Metamkine, c'est avant tout un travail sur le médium cinématographique qui s'inscrit dans la tradition de l' "Expended cinema" ou cinéma élargi. Mais pour eux les problèmes théoriques et historiques restent annexes. Leur pratique ne naît pas d'une théorisation ou de l'existence du cinéma expérimental dont l'histoire et les mouvances actuelles ne leur sont apparues qu'après les débuts. Pourtant leur travail, dans son ensemble, est sûrement un des plus riches et des plus moteurs en France.
Les deux cinéastes s'affichent comme des joueurs de projecteurs qui interprètent des pièces préparées, comme peut le faire un guitariste. L'instrument, ici le projecteur, se joue avec des photogrammes, des filtres colorés, des prismes, des perceuses ou encore des produits chimiques. Durant la réalisation d'une pièce, Metamkine joue de ses images, de found footage et, comme point nodal des précédents, de flux lumineux au sens large. En effet, la variation à partir de la lumière  a toujours été présente et, peut-être depuis leur rencontre avec Loophole Cinema, la lumière du projecteur se conjugue avec des allumettes ou des lampes de poche. La multiplicité des sources lumineuses et leur diffusion grâce à un système de miroir fait de l'écran un espace où interfèrent, se superposent et s'accouplent des images et de la lumière. C'est ici que l'on peut introduire la notion de polyptyque. Le film se structure comme des panneaux qui se confrontent ou qui s'ouvrent vers un autre ensemble. A ce titre, l'expérience Kinobits prolonge de manière évidente cette idée de polyptyque à plusieurs ouvertures.
En symbiose, Jérôme Noetinger utilise son impressionnant et facétieux ensemble sonore. Des boucles magnétiques, des synthétiseurs analogiques et de nombreux bricolages, de la machine à café à la roue de vélo affublées de micro-contacts, se mixent avec des éléments préenregistrés. La puissance de l'interprétation sonore n'est jamais dans une virtuosité d'accompagnement des images. A contrario de la majorité des productions cinématographiques dont le son est bâclé et relégué à un rôle secondaire d'ambiance, Metamkine fusionne les images et le son. Conçu de manière semblable aux accords visuels, le film gagne une unité qui s'empare du spectateur. L'origine de cette intelligence de création est à chercher dans la connaissance du médium : les trois membres de Metamkine travaillent avec une culture musicale ou de cinéma expérimental quasi-similaire. Le questionnement de la matière de l'autre devient plus naturel et le film peut se construire en toute connaissance de cause.
A cet égard, depuis le début de l'année, il m'a été possible d'apprécier leurs collaborations avec Kinobits et Nachtluft. Si la première semble prolonger le travail de Metamkine vers le polyptyque à plusieurs ouvertures (un autre élément visuel intéressant est la réutilisation d'images utilisées dans d'anciennes pièces) et l'exploration sonore articulée autour de l'outil numérique, la seconde la transcende.
Chez Nachtluft / Metamkine, la lumière et le son envahissent l'espace. Le polyptyque sonore et visuel s'implante. Du craquement des allumettes des différents interprètes aux boucles des cinéastes, le son s'impose et tourne afin de prendre possession d'un espace clos par les images. Le spectateur est pris dans un environnement qui le renvoie à lui-même.
Par la force des choses, Metamkine explore un pan de notre espace et nous met à l'épreuve dans des expériences qui nous subjuguent."
Jean-Damien Collin, Limelight N°53, octobre 1996.

"Si nous faisions un recensement des autodidactes, nous découvririons certainement que leurs rangs regorgent de musiciens. En dehors du milieu classique, on les trouve aussi parmi les innovateurs célèbres (tels Ornette Coleman et Jimi Hendrix). Et si le mouvement punk de la fin des années soixante-dix ne vous a pas laissé une forte impression, il a cependant démontré une thèse importante : pas besoin d'être virtuose pour faire de la musique. C'est-à-dire qu'on n'a pas besoin d'être virtuose pour faire de la vraie musique, une musique qui ait un impact.
Selon sa propre définition, Metamkine se désigne comme une cellule d'intervention. Dans les deux biographies de ses trois membres, il est noté : "formation autodidacte". Leurs performances ont un impact viscéral qui se garde d'oublier l'intelligence. Leur matériau, c'est le film et le son. Mais ils ne refusent pas qu'on leur dise qu'ils ressemblent à un groupe musical. Sur scène, ils font face au public ; ils ont des instruments dont ils "jouent" et c'est par l'intermédiaire de ces instruments qu'ils sont en interaction les uns avec les autres ; ils répètent des morceaux, ils improvisent ; ils utilisent le rythme, l'orchestration ; ils ont joué dans des clubs de rock, des festivals de jazz, des salles de concert, ils collaborent de temps en temps avec d'autres musiciens. Comme ils n'utilisent pas d'instruments de musique "normaux", il est absurde de se poser la question de la virtuosité. Mais pour qui les a vus en public, il est évident qu'ils savent exactement ce qu'ils font.
Basé à Grenoble, Metamkine est un trio créé en 1987, comprend deux cinéastes et un musicien. Christophe Auger et Xavier Quérel manient des projecteurs super 8 et 16mm pointés en direction du public, où l'image jaillit de deux grands miroirs ou plus, avant de parvenir sur l'écran qui est au fond de la scène. Le son provient de synthétiseurs analogiques, de bandes en boucles et des objets amplifiés de Jérôme Noetinger. Selon leurs termes, "ce n'est pas un travail théorique. C'est totalement empirique. L'un de nous fait le son, les autres, les images. Le moment important, c'est la confrontation sur scène."
Metamkine nous offre l'expérience rare d'une musique libérée de toute servitude par rapport au cinéma, un cinéma live projeté comme de la musique, avec des projectionnistes qui manifestent une spontanéité d'instrumentistes. Cet esprit d'improvisation abouti est mis au service de compositions extrêmement répétées et l'empathie sur scène vise aussi souvent la subversion des attentes que l'affirmation joyeuse d'un travail de musique collective. Il est évident que Metamkine appartient à la tradition du cinéma expérimental, une tradition qu'ils contribuent à approfondir en jouant comme un groupe musical."
Tom Cora, programme Festival Klangspuren, Schwaz (Autriche), septembre 1996. Traduit de l'anglais par Cécile Wajsbrot.

La Cellule d'Intervention METAMKINE is an open-ended group including musicians and filmmakers researching the relationship between image and sound. Since 1987 different concepts have been carried out and performed in festivals, galleries, cinemas and contemporary art spaces, in France, Europe, Canada, USA. Since 1995 they have developed collaborations with other groups or artists like Nachtluft (Switzerland), Kinobits (France), Loophole Cinema (England), Le Cube (France), la Flibuste (France), Voice Crack (Switzerland).

Through the magic of mirrors, multiple projectors and highly ingenious live on stage editing, Metamkine produces and directs a new film with each of their performances. Working around a core narrative, they spill eddies of impromptu vignettes, accompanied by a live soundtrack of tape fragments and ancient synthesiser sounds. These, three collaborators, who have worked together for ten years, have succeeded in pushing the boundaries of film and soundtrack into the realm of live performance - Utterly unique.

Jérôme NOETINGER, electroacoustic devices.
Christophe AUGER, projectors 16mm.
Xavier QUÉREL, projectors 16mm.

"Take a census of the autodidacts and we would certainly discover that their ranks are rife with musicians. Outside of the classical milieu their numbers count even among the well-known innovators (like Ornette Coleman and Jimi Hendrix). And if the early punk movement of the late 70's didn't make a lasting impression on you, it at least proved one of it's most important points. You don't have to be a virtuoso to make music. That is, you don't have to be a virtuoso to make effective music, music with impact.
By their own definition Metamkine call itself "une cellule d'intervention". Two of the three members' biographies note : formation autodidacte. Their performances have a visceral impact that does not bypass the brain. Their materials are film and sound. But they don't disagree when you notice that they resemble a band : They perform on stage, facing the audience, they have instruments which they "play" and they interact with each other through these instruments: they rehearse pieces, they improvise ; they use rhythm, orchestration ; they have played in rock clubs, jazz festivals, concert halls, they collaborate from time to time with other musicians.
But since they don't play "normal" musical instruments it's all the more irrelevant to wonder about questions like virtuosity.
Even so, when you see them live it's quite clear that they know exactly what they are doing. Based in Grenoble, Metamkine is a trio founded in 1987, compromised of two cineastes and one musician. Christophe Auger and Xavier Quérel wield super8 and 16mm projectors pointed in the direction of the audience where the image bounce off of two or more large mirrors to arrive on the screen at the back of the stage. The sound comes from Jérôme Noetinger's analog synthesizers, tape loops and amplified objects.
In their own words, "the work is not theoretical. It's completly empirical. One of us offers the sound, the others the images. The important moment is the confrontation on stage." Metamkine offers us the rare experience of music liberated from servitude to cinema, and a live cinema projected like music itself, the projectionists enjoying the spontaneity of an instrumentalist. A highly articulate improvisationnal spirit serves tighly rehearsed compositions and the empathy onstage is pointed as often at the subversion of expectations as in the affirmation and joy of collective music-making. Of course, they do belong to the tradition of experimental cinema, a tradition that Metamkine has deepended by acting like a band."
Tom Cora for Klangspuren Festival, Schwaz (Austria), September 1996.


"But it is Noetinger's work with the pioneering multimedia performance group, Cellule d'Intervention Metamkine, that best exemplifies his capacity to fuse highly disparate art forms. Their work ethic is a far cry from the trendly multi-art events that are currently mushrooming in the capitals of Europe.
"In multimedia events", he says, "you've got images and sound alongside one another, but there's no real relationship between them. Our work, on the other hand, is an interactive process : the music and images are created simultaneously, and if you were to listen to the music on its own, there would be something missing."
A Metamkine performance is a concentrated and intense affair : equipped with the barest essentials, a mixing desk, two Revox magnetic tape recorders and a couple of korg synthetizers, Noetinger improvises disparate electroacoustic sounds that mirror the dreamlike, evocative film images produced by his two associates, Xavier Quérel and Christophe Auger. Their work methods are as crudely effective as those of Noetinger : they apply chemicals to their films on stage, play around with the film speed or with colour filters and place prisms in front of their projectors. "All three of us are on stage just like a group of musicians", comments Noetinger. "The projectors are like instruments and each of us reacts to what the others are doing."
Metamkine's performances have aroused interest in musicians of all stripes. The group have collaborated with the free electroacoustic improvisation trio Nachluft as well as New York cellist Tom Cora, and they are currently envisaging projects with a number of the new generation of post-rock groups. Yet despite their predilection for analogue equipment and lo-fi working methods, they are not averse to collaborating with musicians who give precedence to computer technology. Together with the remarkable Korean musician Lê Quan Ninh on computer and percussion, Camel Zekri on computer and guitar, the Japanese instrument builder Atau Tanaka on the BioMuse and another musician using digital equipment, Metamkine recently staged a series of improvised performances at various locations throughout France under the name Kinobits, which showed just how fruitful and far-reaching such an association can be. The performances were an inspiring and frequently chaotic mix of acoustic, electronic and electroacoustic elements, an aural and visual celebration that even included some live sampling - of the group itself - by Noetinger, demonstrating that analogue and digital techniques can be complementary. As Noetinger puts it : "we have to move beyond this opposition between analogue and digital. The important thing is the music, not where it's coming from."
Rahma Khazam, The Wire 157, Mars 1997.

Three French artists place retro-tech at the heart of their unique, exclusively live musico-cinematic creations. by Chris Kennedy

The performance starts slowly. The light of a 16mm film projector, softly dimmed, bounces off the screen. The quiet whirr of the projector’s mechanism fills the room as the machine gradually increases its speed. A second moving image appears on the screen, superimposed on the first, and a slowly rising static drone joins the hum of projectors. The image flickers slightly and then it starts to burn in the projector’s gate, bubbling away from the heat of the bulb. The screen fills with the pop of a blinding light that sets off a sonic fireburst, and the performance tumbles into full swing.
For the next forty minutes, La Cellule d’Intervention Metamkine, a live performance trio from Grenoble, fuses the worlds of expanded cinema and improvisatory music in a visceral live experience, reminiscent of the sound and light shows of the 1960s and ’70s that attempted to go beyond the possibilities of a single image and a single screen. The two projectionists in Metamkine move between eight 16mm film projectors and an assortment of filters, lights, and visual tricks, building layers of images on top of each other. Shadows of projectors are cast onto the screen, film celluloid melts and live chemical processing of film stock induces visual transformations. Meanwhile, a musician uses radio waves, electrical hums, and pre-recorded tape loops to both react to and spur on the filmic melee. Contact mikes attached to short-wave radios, electrical transformers, and various metal objects send sound waves through Revox tape recorders and Korg synthesizers to bend them into new shapes and pulses. At times, the music builds to a drone that matches a calmer onscreen section; at other times, the three performers produce a visual and sonic cacophony, intensely prodding one another in a growling and sputtering mechanical reverie. Sonically mirroring the actions of the projectionists, the musician deftly moves from one sound to the other, negotiating his mixing board to control the various electrical sounds he produces with his equipment.
Though film performance is a novel practice in itself, what further distinguishes Metamkine’s performance is that the three collaborators assume a band-like stance in front of the screen. They achieve this by aiming their multiple projectors towards the audience at two large-scale mirrors positioned to reflect the images back onto the screen. With audio interpretation of the events unfolding at centre stage and the image manipulation taking place before the audience, the conventions of classical stage set-up are contravened. Projectors normally relegated to a closed booth behind the audience now take the main stage, revealing the means of production in a structural strategy at the heart of Metamkine’s work.
Jérôme Noetinger, Xavier Quérel, and Christophe Auger, the trio that make up Metamkine, have been intervening in the traditions of film and sound art for the past fifteen years. As active members of an art scene based in Grenoble, they have developed a truly improvisational and independent artistic life: controlling how they produce, exhibit, and disseminate their images and sound, and openly sharing their knowledge with other like-minded artists.
The first stirrings of Metamkine date back to 1987, when Jérôme Noetinger arrived in Grenoble to study under Xavier Garcia at Fontaine’s Collectif de recherche électroacoustique et d’action musicale. Common interest in music and film brought him together with photographer Christophe Auger, filmmaker François-Christophe Marzal and musician Richard Antez to form Metamkine. They were interested in using compositional techniques from the studio in a live setting, as well as in developing new ways to work with music and image. In the initial performances, Auger and Marzal would project slides while Antez and Noetinger would play back pre-recorded compositions as accompaniment. The group began to evolve and they started using Super 8 projectors and live improvised music.
Marzal and Antez eventually left the group to continue their own respective careers in film and music. Xavier Quérel, who had attended Metamkine shows religiously as a university student, quickly moved to take their place. In 1991 he officially joined the group, creating the core trio that has continued to this day, with occasional expansions to include other projectionists and musicians. Within a few short years, the trio had made the two major discoveries that lie at the core of the live experience they create. They moved all the performers to the front stage and started developing all the film they would use in performance by hand, without the aid of a traditional film lab.
Before Quérel joined, their set-up was quite traditional, with the projectors in the back and the musicians on the stage. As their performances became more involved, they found that the audience would often crane their necks to see how the projectionists were creating the visual collages on screen. Moving everything to the front provided for a more performative presentation style and allowed the trio to interact more like musicians. As a result, the trio has built a strong improvisatory bond. In performance, the three of them are able to respond to each other instinctively, drawing the audience into an intimate experience.
When Auger and Quérel decided to start processing their film themselves, they really began to expand the possibilities of their performance work, as well as the general culture of filmmaking surrounding them. Auger had worked for seven years in a high-end photography lab before giving that up for Metamkine, and had learned about processing and developing photography there. Initially, Auger and Quérel would process their Super 8 and 16mm film in buckets, but they soon decided to set up a small laboratory in a corner room of the 102, a local squatted arts and performance space. As video was becoming more prominent, they were able to find more and more equipment to commandeer for their own work.
They soon amassed enough equipment to hand-process more regularly, and, with the help of fellow filmmakers Gaëlle Rouard and Etienne Caire, they opened up their lab to the public as Atelier MTK. The lab had a contact printer, an optical printer and the ability to make releasable film prints. It was set up as a co-operative, requiring filmmakers to pay only for the basic material fees in order to hand-process their own prints. The lab was hugely successful and filmmakers travelled from across France to use the facilities. Quérel and Auger found that they had to book a block of time months in advance in order to do their own work there. In response, they started encouraging the founding of other small, co-operative regional labs in France and Switzerland, and began to scale back their own services. While Atelier MTK continues to run in a more limited capacity, there are a half dozen other microlabs continuing their work across the country.
Beyond the ability to create new images and even to work with chemicals onstage to stunning effect, the culture of hand-processing was quick to affect the ethos of Metamkine and their surrounding fellow filmmakers. Although Noetinger does not make films, he is quick to explain the importance of hand-processing on a filmmaker’s self-reliance: “I can make a tape recording and I can listen to it immediately, but when you take some pictures with a Super 8 or 16mm camera, if you want to see the image, you have to send it to a laboratory that will develop the image for you. Then there is this copy of your work that doesn’t belong to you, which to me is a very classical way of being alienated. [Creating your own] lab is a way of being able to control all levels of artistic work.”
This notion of independence is very important to Metamkine. As Auger states, “it’s important for us to live outside of Paris, where the main film centre is, and to be able to make film without much money. You just need film stock.” This independence also relies on a sense of interdependence, something that Noetinger does not see as much of in the music world. “To see the people of the Atelier working together to create seven or eight labs across France is really good … Musicians are not able to work together at the same level as a film co-op.”
It is towards this notion of interdependence that the trio has worked in organisations outside of Metamkine. Since reducing their activities with Atelier MTK, Quérel and Auger have continued to teach processing workshops, and Auger works with his partner Laure Sainte-Rose at Ad Libitum, a preservation laboratory that restores experimental films, home movies, and other noncommercial work. Noetinger writes for the music magazine, Revue et Corrigée, and distributes small label improvisational music and musique concrète through his non-profit distribution company, also called Metamkine. The label is probably best known for the Cinéma pour l’oreille imprint that produced a series of thirty mini-CDs throughout the late ’90s. In addition, all three perform in various ensembles, and have programmed for the 102. Originally a squat in Grenoble, 102 rue d’Alembert has become a city-recognized (but still proudly self-sufficient) venue for music, performance, and film screenings. Noetinger speaks of all this activity as driven by a deep commitment to “make things happen.”
This interdependence is also reflected in the trio’s performance style, which relies heavily on improvisation. They treat the projectors like musical instruments, with Quérel and Auger able to quickly move from one to the other to keep up with the flow of the performance. Their proximity within the performance space keeps them attentive to each other’s movements. As Quérel states, “In performing live, we know each other, our styles; but it’s always completely based on live improvisation … I am very sensitive to the other projectors, listening to what is happening … This relationship that you can have is really important." Noetinger, who performs regularly with Lionel Marchetti and MIMEO, amongst others, points out that the greatest difference in working with Auger and Quérel is that cinema creates a different sense of time. The pace is defined by the mechanical speed of the projector, which allows his musical responses to evolve at a slower speed. Otherwise, “when I’m working with Christophe and Xavier, I feel like they’re just musicians.”
When talking about their work, a key idea that the trio often brings up is the Situationist ideal of détournement. Coined by Guy Debord, détournement roughly translates into the idea of collage, putting two different things together to create something new and unintended. As Noetinger states, part of their art is “to show that the projector not only plays back the film, but it can be an instrument to act on directly. The image becomes just one part of it. It is like how I work with tape recorders. A tape recorder is meant to record music and play back in a certain way, but you can act on it in different ways. You can change its function to create something new. So, you can take something that is meant for a certain thing and play with it.” Noetinger often uses two tape recorders, one to play back pre-recorded sounds and the other to build loops using both the playback and recording heads simultaneously.
Noetinger feels that this attitude is also inherent in their use of the equipment itself, which they obtained at auction from the French Army when the army moved on to video. Their appropriation of these machines is opposite to the traditional idea of progress. “It is part of the idea of this French word détournement that you can still do things with old equipment that people maybe threw away because it was not modern anymore.” Thus, elements indirectly used for war become part of artistic independence and creative use.
Even with many artists reusing cast-off equipment, Metamkine finds itself as one of the last groups to work with live 16mm film images and analogue music. Although it comes out of a tradition of expanded cinema and draws a lot of influence from groups that existed when it began (including Britain’s Loophole Cinema, which performed a lot with shadows, and Germany’s Schmelzdahin, which performed live chemical transformations on film), Metamkine is part of a dwindling pool of similar creators. A brief list of people still working in 16mm performance would include Alex Mackenzie in Vancouver, Bruce McClure and the duo The Presstapes (Luis Recoder and Sandra Gibson) in New York, Silt and Wetgate on the West Coast, and a handful of groups from other French microlabs.
Ironically, in this age of interactivity, laptop musicians have been the prime culprits in returning the visual element to the function of wallpaper. As Noetinger chuckles, “Nowadays it’s more and more common to see people playing on laptops, so they must have a video image. They’re afraid of things being empty, so they must fill it. The laptop is important, but you need to work with it more. You see performers who are on laptops and there is no image, but they still have to be onstage. Why do they have to be onstage? It’s still the classical bourgeois idea of representation.”
Noetinger continues, “After all, what is really important for me [is that] when I’m playing in this way, I’m really not making music for film. We’re not making film for music.” Watching a Metamkine performance reveals the truth of that. With their devotion to improvisation and to creating each performance anew, Metamkine has broken the pattern in which music is in servitude to film or vice versa. To this end, they have never released an album or a DVD. Nor is there a sound example on this issue’s Musicworks CD—because they feel that the live experience is not replicable. Sound, image, and the audience’s response to the performance all intertwine.
Halfway through their performance at the Soundplay festival in Toronto, Quérel ran to the back of the hall and used a light to project shadows of the audience onto the screen. It was a strong visual image for Metamkine’s sense of event and sense of community. Noetinger summed up the importance of the spectator to the completion of the performance: “I think the connection is more the way it is meant together. It is very open; it is up to you to see the connections. The audience is completely free to make the connections themselves.” A performance by Metamkine thus invites the audience to discover anew the possibilities of exploring sound and image as a collaborative experience.

Chris Kennedy is a Toronto-based filmmaker, curator, and writer. His films, which are often shot on Super 8 or regular 8mm, have been shown in Switzerland, Finland, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. He has programmed film, video, and live performance for the Images Festival since 2003, and has served on the screening collective for Pleasure Dome since 2000. He regularly writes reviews for Musicworks.

originally published in Musicworks 94, Spring 2006 (www.musicworks.ca)

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