MATTIN
Social Dissonance

We are not what we think we are. Our self-image as natural individuated subjects is determined behind our backs—historically by political forces, cognitively by the language we use, and neurologically by sub-personal mechanisms, as revealed by scientific and philosophical analyses. Under contemporary capitalism, as the gap between self-image and reality becomes an ever greater source of social and mental distress, these theoretical insights are potential dynamite. Shifting his explorations from the sonic to the social, amplifying alienation and playing with psychic noise, artist and performer Mattin finally lights the fuse.

In what is a handbook for practical transformation as much as a theoretical treatise, Mattin sets out the thinking behind his score Social Dissonance, in which the audience is the instrument. The noise is here to stay. Alienation is a constitutive part of subjectivity and an enabling condition for exploring social dissonance—the territory upon which we already find ourselves, the condition we inhabit today.

With a foreword by Ray Brassier. [publisher's note]

Published by Urbanomic, 2023
Essays / Music & Sound / Politics