Music for Chameleons (Ataraxia)

In celebration of the Venice Biennale’s opening week, ATARAXIA places euphony at the heart of its programme with a full range of sonic sensibilities: conversation, vaudeville, folk, disco and electronica. Arnaud Cohen’s performative lunch draws from strategies of comedic absurdity and conviviality with a view to returning radical social gestures to the hands of artists. The anchoring of everyday activities like cooking and eating playfully disrupt conventions around food and sociality in the spirit of Situationism. We will then be joined by Martin Hess, whose work with the Volkskulturfest Obwald, the iconic rural folk festival in central Switzerland, demonstrates the transcultural connections instrumentalised by folk genres. For ATARAXIA, Hess will present material from past editions of the festival, convening Folk’s pasts, presents and futures. Closing this first chapter is Pádraic E. Moore, who steers us toward the twilight zone with Music for Chameleons – a project mining the transgressive undertones of club and music cultures, particularly pioneering genres like Hi-NRG. With Music for Chameleons, Moore opens up possibilities for us to re-inhabit aural experiences that have animated night crawlers for decades, while enabling us, as do Hess and Cohen, to imagine new ‘social-aesthetic’ encounters.