Control Agents

There are some people you don’t hear from for a long long time, but maybe stumble upon their name in an old email or address book. And you think to yourself, “I wonder what they’re up to now?” because you know it’ll be something interesting. This has happened a lot to me recently because I’ve been trying to transfer everything over to a new computer and I’ve found a load of old emails that I meant to do things with, but (because of my usual uselessness) never managed to. Keir wrote the piece on Punk and Autonomia which got republished on Uncarved. He’s now rejigged it into When Two Sevens Clash: Punk and Autonomia which appears alongside some other texts on the Free Association site. A lot of stuff about summits like the G8 and counter-summits, etc. Personally I have mixed feelings about the whole “summit hopping” phenomenon, but a good case is made on the site. The first draft of the autonomia piece has apparently been translated (by persons unknown) into Finnish and Russian. Patrick Maun was the man behind vienese ambient industrialists Immolation by Scum, who I’ve previously mentioned here. Patrick was one of many interesting people flung my way via Peter Rehberg (now of Mego fame). Referring to comments at the old blog site (which I have yet to upload here), Patrick writes: “I saw there was some curiosity as to what I was/am up so thought I’d fill you in. I moved back to Minneapolis in ’93, then moved to Amsterdam, then moved back to Minneapolis. I am still recording music but have been working under the name maun since about ’95. While I have been actively recording, music has kind of taken a back seat to the visual art I have been making since the early 90’s. You can check some of it out at http://www.patrickmaun.com. Sound does play a big role in most of my installations and videos. The music I have been making is pretty similar to what I’ve always done. It’s either quiet and rhythmic, or loud and abrasive. I’ve done a lot of work with various choreographers, so a lot of the music is reflective of that. You can check some of it out here. I also have CD’s of many of my live performances including the show at the Scala and the tour of Czechoslovakia. Let me know if you’d like copies of them. Actually, now that I think of it, I’ll just throw an MP3 of the Scala show online and you can grab it there. I am sitting on several CD’s that I’d love to release, so if you know anyone interested in distributing them, let me know. Patrick’s current artistic output “explores the interplay between technology and society, authenticity and power, communications and history”. His site is well worth checking. Trevor Blake wrote the critique of Whitehouse collaborator Peter Sotos which I reprinted on Uncarved. I was very pleased to see that this was, for some time, the top google hit when you searched for Sotos. The article was culled from OVO Magazine, which was one of those great lost 90s zines which managed to combine regularity with high quality writing on all sorts of subjects (including many “themed” issues). Lost… until now… Greetings Thank you for publishing my review of PURE from OVO 10 Mayhem. That issue and all the rest (500+ pages) have been scanned, entered into the public domain and posted online. Each issue now has a new introduction, a new issue has been published (theme: sperm) and other issues are in the works (theme for the next issue: AntiChrist) [that issue is now out – JE]. Uncarved looks great, going to spend some time checking it out. Trevor Blake The site also includes a nice potted biography which is well worth checking.