In the disposable age, the age of the download and the MP3, the era of compression, minimalism and the rejection of the tangible in favour of the transient and ephemeral in the name of portability, streamlining and a culture whereby possessions are merely considered clutter and impedances, the aesthetic qualities of physical objects are all too often overlooked or dismissed as irrelevant. Advocates of intangibles may enjoy a sense of liberation, but are missing out on so many levels, and on so many sensory experiences.
This magnificent package, released by the reliably non-mainstream Raster-Noton, a label that’s all about the art, transcends mere format fetishism, as was prevalent in the late 80s and throughout the 90s.
The book – 128 pages in length and beautifully presented – is predominantly in French, but contains sections in German and English. The pieces are all descriptions of people gathered by Chaton over the course of – appropriately – a decade, which are intercut with various random documents from the everyday, such as receipts from supermarkets and so on and so forth. Chaton is superbly adroit at turning the random, seemingly inconsequential fragments of humdrum existence into art, distilling them into something altogether more meaningful, a kind of document of contemporary life.
As a shameful monolinguist, I’m only able to comment on the English passages, which are formulated in successions of declarative sentences that contrive to create a bewildering effect. For example, from the pen-portrait of an astronaut: ‘He is inside the automated transfer vehicle. He speaks with an astronaut. He is with Jean-François. He is with a senior advisor. He reads the ATV programme. He is inside the ATV. He is inside an automatic spaceship. He navigates.’ And so on. It’s an unusual narrative technique, and its clipped, factual form is without tangible movement, yet somehow builds a curious tension. It’s also the perfect counterpart to the audio element of this release.
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The audio works contained on the CD are classic Chaton, and slot in with his ‘Evenements’ album and the ‘transfer’ series of single releases recorded in collaboration with guitarist Andy Moor, who again contributes to ‘Décade’.
Beginning as a purely spoken word piece, the first track, ‘en ville’ slowly and subtly adds background instrumentation which, over time, builds in volume and intensity, microbeats and static and warping notes eventually usurping the foreground.
Chaton’s delivery is a real defining feature. ‘US Border’ consists of Chaton reading, in English, a list of questions and statements derived from passport details, etc., in a robotic voice, name / surname / date of birth / place of birth...
There are eerie fragments, looped and echoed, accompanied by sparse dissonance and fear chords on ‘in the ISS’, and across the 8 tracks, Chaton and his collaborators construct a jigsaw that when complete, leaves the listener feeling as though the banal horrors or everyday life have been compressed and rarefied, and somehow displaced in space and time. Simultaneously numbing and engaging, ‘Decades’ transcends the confines of single media works to create something that’s genuinely capable of having an effect on its audience.
Anne-James Chaton Online
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