Jo by Cameron Jamie – live soundtrack Keiji Haino

A HangarBicocca project in collaboration with Teatro dal Verme
Curated by Andrea Lissoni

JO (60′, 2004) is the most recent film by Cameron Jamie and – like most of his misuratissima video production – there is only shown in a theater with live soundtrack, basically like a performance. JO is divided into two distinct parts that show alternately bizarre ceremonies more or less directly linked to the events of Independence in France and the United States: the ritual practices related to identity and symbolism of Joan of Arc, and the annual competition to those who eat more hot dogs, which takes place July 4 at Coney Island. Among Orleans, Paris and the States, a parade and a popular competition, Jamie Cameron – who would have heard of heroin at a fast food french fries because of Jeanne d’Arc – compare not only the patriotic values of European and North American cultures, but also how (and where) are generated, appropriate, will distort and crystallize, the contemporary imagination. Film unsettling, and construction sequences from very unusual and at times overwhelming for radicalism, aggression and beauty, JO is accompanied live by a visceral, apocalyptic and powerful musical performance by musician Keiji Haino. JO is in fact an original reflection on the more or less paradoxical construction of the myth of contemporary and invulnerability.

Cameron Jamie (Los Angeles, 1969) is one of the most extraordinary and mysterious international visual art scene. He has exhibited in galleries, museums, art centers, film festivals, exhibitions care, teaching, and is a powerful explorer and both a connoisseur of subcultures and their expressions, from the music to the visual and performing. In his research investigates and documents, from a completely personal, contemporary folklore and traditions of minority cultural forms strangers who live and create media on the edge of civilization. To put this detailed and original research, Cameron Jamie uses films, installations, drawings, photographs and live media. His films, presented only in the theaters and live together far from the cult band the Melvins or rock-metal scene from the great Japanese musician Keiji Haino, have explored subjects such as wrestling sessions held in the local courts (Backyards) Housing California by teenagers (BB, 1998-2000), the nights spent in adolescent Halloween haunted houses (Spook House, 2002-2003), between the demonic rituals, religious el’iniziatico in the popular demonstrations in the countries of the Tyrol night of St. Nikolaus (Kranky Klaus, 2002-2003). The work of Cameron Jamie, shy and withdrawn from the spotlight artist of the contemporary art world, were presented in the most important exhibition spaces including the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), Salzburger Kunstverein (Salzburg), Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum (Graz) OK Centrum für Gegenwartskunst (Linz), Whitney Museum of American Art (New York) and Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris).

Keiji Haino (1952) is one of the most fascinating and influential artists of contemporary experimental music. Dark and mysterious figure around which revolves the entire scene of the psychedelic rock and Japanese noise, Hain made his debut in 1971 with the legendary noise-rock band Lost Araff reputation and reach the final trio Fushitsusha. The landing his solo career with the album Watashi Dake marks a vital step: with a single voice and guitar improvisations creates devastating emotional depth. For over thirty years Keiji Haino explores the entire spectrum of research and traditional music of this resulting in performance that the rediscovery of sound investing any type of instrument, guitar vocals, drum machine from the set of Indonesian gamelan . In the tradition of Japanese noise Haino most brutal merges with that of free jazz and blues, giving shape to a whole new genre and certainly unique. He has worked with the most significant and restless musicians internationally Z’EV by Bill Laswell, John Zorn to Thurston Moore, from Fred Frith to Faust, crossing the path of visual artists open to the world of sounds like Tony Conrad, Christian Marclay, and of course, Cameron Jamie. Haino has published more than 100 albums.