νομάς [nomás]

Programme Note

For Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, the term νoμας (nomás), meaning "nomad", stands for a theoretical figure embodying non-conformism, the crossing of boundaries, and freedom. [A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (London & New York: Continuum, 2004)]
It is the free and cosmopolitan spirit that positions itself subversively against established social structures. Important political events took place during my work on Nomás, for example the referendum in Greece with the outcome "OXI". I interpret these events as providing very important insights for a new Europe. Would Zeus fall in love with this Europa today? Essentially they also constitute a realpolitik and an ideal of democracy that are mutually irreconcilable. In this context the figure of Yanis Varoufakis, the former Finance Minister, embodies the nomad.
Certain questions about the idea of the nomad played an important part during my work on Nomás: how does one behave in different surroundings? What does one take away from the different places in which one has been, and what parts of one's original self does one keep? What does one leave behind in a place? As a composer, like the nomad, I feel the constant restlessness of homelessness as well as self-criticism. The idea of the new beginning is always present.
In Nomás, written for and with ensemble mosaik, sounds only come into being as subjective interpretations of concrete concepts. These concepts can be of a historical, acoustic or musical nature; the sounds can be produced by acoustic or electronic instruments. What interests me most here is the transformation of the sounds through the temporal or vertical context in which they are placed and their transformation through the means of reproduction. The idea of instrumental and electronic resynthesis plays an important part in this; as with an X-ray photograph, the sounds are illuminated and information is culled from them. The initially trivial data is interpreted through an extremely subjective resynthesis, creating different realities via an electronic analysis of acoustic and electronic sounds. It is the process of resynthesis, the reflection of reality, that ultimately leads to a change in reality. With each reproduction, the bond between the image and its reproduction is gradually stretched. What remains on the path between transformations is noise: subtraction, disturbance. The perception of information and disturbance is interchangeable and remains a question of interpretation.
The nomad keeps moving on. The comfort zone is replaced by movement and identity. Constantly. Stubbornly and against something. Against fashion, USP (not Ultra St Pauli) and every form of dogmatic pragmatism. The nomad takes noise with them as a reminder of the human.