Perte Totale Operations is a fluid collective, revolving around poet Antoine Boute. The crew consists out of an interchanging constellation of musicians, amongst which Mauro Pawlowski, Jean Delacoste, JP de Gheest and guests – and a vj: visual artist Alexandra Crouwers.
About Antoine Boute:
Antoine Boute is a Belgian writer, performer and philosopher. He explores the boundaries between body, language and voice, by use of a variety of means and media: experimental novels, poetic texts, essays, sound-performances in French and Dutch, conferences, graphic poetry, film, internet performances, collective writings with his children, the organisation of BRUL-evenings and a nocturnal festival in a forest (Boslawaai), and collaborates with musicians, writers, artists, children, homeless people and students. He’s the author of a number of books, published in France, Belgium and Canada, amongst which Cavales (Mix, 2005), Du toucher. Essai sur Pierre Guyotat, (publie.net, 2008) and Tout Public (Les Petits Matins, 2011).
Reviews Antoine Boute (translated from Dutch):
Despite the large crowd and the extensive program, the fans know where to find the Francophone, Belgian poet Antoine Boute. Boute makes a bit of a shy impression, as he gets on the stage to start his reading. In his melodic Dutch, he begins: ‘You watch a guy getting on the stage’. He continues talking with an increasing stutter: ‘and from the sssstaaRRT it’s cccllllclclclcccllllearrrrr, sosososSOMETHINGGGG is wrong!’. Part of the audience is looking bewildered. Now that there’s no turning back, Boute, half-hidden behind his notes, his left hand gesturing energeticly, produces the most insane and voluminous sounds. He growls, stutters and beatboxes his way through his sentences, which seemingly derail, but still stay to the point: the relation between an uncomfortable audience and an unusual speaker. He achieves at least as much result when he, at the end, returns to his own, talking voice. The new Johnny van Doorn? The dadaist of 2010? Boute has won the audience over, and I notice someone saying: ‘I’m glad we stayed here’.
Antoine Boute was the highlight of the evening, without any discussion. The man dissected the Dutch language until it only consisted out of sounds. The result was a devastating whirlwind of dadaistic force. A troupe of elderly people, seated two rows behind us, underwent it with a ‘what the fuck?’-expression of Pascalsmetsian proportions.
www.veto.be
About Perte Totale Operations:
Boute’s disturbing and megalomaniacal, but humoristic texts, referring to horror-pornography and incestuous mass-mutilations, are produced by means of a throat-singing-like stutter. They are the base for energetic live shows, where noise-improvisations by a fluid constellation of musicians are combined with video-projections, of which the images are in joint contrast with the words and chaos of the performances.
Perte Totale Operations consists, next to Antoine Boute, out of video-maker/visual artist Alexandra Crouwers (www.alexandracrouwers.com), Mauro Pawlowski (guitarist of Belgian band dEUS, and a range of other projects, like Mauro & The Grooms, Gruppo Pawlowski, Otot and Somnabula), Jean Philippe De Gheest (drummer for Mark Lanegan and Creature with the Atom Brain), guitarist/artist Jean Delacoste (Stahlmus Delegation, http://www.jeandl.net) and guests.
By using various texts, changing constellations of participants and the improvisations of the moment itself, no performance is the same.
