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Léo Collin

composer

How would you explain to a child what kind of work you do?

My work consists of making collages, composed of part of multiple shapes and from different natures, found at home or when I am walking.

To what extend does your current work have to do with your studies?

The studium of composition was more a pretext to feel what can be the zhdk which means = I work now within a team, I feel legitimate to choreograph the music I compose, to add texts on it , to extend the stage with my own videos and why not perform myself. I had diverse practices as a child and I rediscovered at Zhdk what it is a way to take care because it makes sustainable creative things, full me with creativy and limiting negative impact on others. I still compose music for ensemble and electronic music is part of my job.

What is bothering you most right now?

Put all my force to propose spacetimes which counteract the fictions responsible for the current species extinction, hijacking daily colonial behaviours, putting another sounds from the actual radios which constantly “sing” our (imcomprehensible for me) human exceptionalism. I hope what the work I am doing can help in this sense.

Do you feel you belong to a particular scene?

No, I'm sitting between two chairs: between the performance scene (freiszene theatreperformancetanz) which I share the aesthetics they propose, (but unfortunately it seems not fitting with the work I am doing) and the neue musik scene where I feel at home (but which is offshore, not opened to the current situation).

Who or what inspires you?

The living animals, vegetables, minerals and all this life which live together within over millions of years. I was rediscovering it by my readings on the philosophy of the living.

What rooms do you need, what rooms does your practice need?

I need a theatre or public institution that receives public funds to support my initiatives and stay safe from the police – I can criticize our neoliberal society without stressing to go to jail. My praxis needs an atelier or a theater room.

In what kind do you collaborate with others?

I can constate is that through with the ensemble KIT, where I spent most of my time, we are gradually building up a “movement” a flux that advocates fairness and respect: Rather to impose a system, it is much worth to be attentive to the needs of each other and this constantly. Nothing is granted. So I work more with in mind an ecosystem rather of a collective, using the words such responsibility rather than hierarchy.

How does your (professional) network work, what role does it play in everyday life?

As an independent artist, I choose to live with an “active” interdependence: the network acts like biodiversity: If a fountain runs dry, I have to make sure before that there are other sources. Monoculture is simply suicide, so the network is the definition of possible survival if there is a storm : I spend most of my time creating a network by working for different people, making different type of project.

Where would you like to be present or represented?

Difficult to say. reading this question I am thinking about the “ When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers” (I heard it was from old judaism tradition...)

How would you define success for yourself?

success means no hegemony in my own life between the various activities that compose it, by privileging a good relationship between the different energies that pass through me during the day or the year. It is not so easy, because the musician's practice is based on repetition of the same movement or movements - as we are pushed like athletes: So the success is to keep this feeling of fluidity.

What are you currently missing? What do you miss in general?

Difficult to answer: I can say what I lack the justice in justice.

What blows my mind?

What I wish to answer: the chance to wake up this morning alive free of disease or pain! the truth: Why nothing change and why I keep doing the same thing day after day?

What else would you have become if not…?

If my body and my synapse were not so resonant with ideologisms, I think I would oscillate between travel around the world by bike and various jobs.

What question is never asked, but should be?

How often you feel like you're always doing the opposite of what you want to do?