The first Grubic’s Cube happened in 2009 at Hotel Congress in Tucson, Arizona. A four-piece jazz band was placed inside a cube and asked to play “The Girl from Ipanema” ad nauseam. Passers-by were given balloons to inflate and place in the cube with the intent of stopping the music by immobilizing the musicians.
A new version of the Grubic’s Cube was performed in Tours, FR on 29-9-11 and Nantes, FR on 30-9-11 and 1-10-11. The shows were produced by Laurent Mareschal, to whom I owe great gratitude. Also, thanks to Doume Maillard, sound-man extraordinaire, and William of EmergencyKit Collectif. The players at La Fabrique were:
Eric Pifeteau (French Cowboy, Little Rabbits)
Stephane Louvain (French Cowboy, Little Rabbits)
Sean Rogers (Orkesta Mendoza)
The players at Le Temps Machine in Tours were:
Jean-Baptiste (JB) Geoffrey (Pneu)
Jerome Vasserau (Pneu)
Jeromie Morin (The Dictaphone)
Sean Rogers (Orkesta Mendoza)
The next version of the Grubic’s Cube was made for La Nuit du Van in Nantes France. The players included:
Enid Pifeteau (Rock Roll and Remember)
Eric Pifeteau
Stephane Louvain
Benoit Guchet
Another Grubic’s Cube happened in June 2018 in Thore-la-Rochette for the Gare-la-Rochette festival.
Answers to a few questions about Grubic’s Cube
1.
At the age of 14, I joined a soul/R&B band that played 4 nights a week at some R&B nightclubs in Northern California. We would start at 9 pm and sometimes not finish until 6 the next morning. There were times when guns were pulled and fired- a singer got shot because he would not sing a Santana song. One day, our band was playing in a park in an area that was seemingly off-limits to law enforcement. Someone with a gun told our band that if we stopped playing, one of us would die. We started to play, and after about 15 minutes, somebody cut the power to the stage. The electric instruments had to stop playing, but the drummer and I were able to continue. We played for almost an hour before the guy with the gun finally left. I think that this experience was the seed for the Ad Nauseam Project.
2.
My first large scale performance was entitled Stealing a Bale of Hay. It included musicians and singers performing a musical composition while, at the same time, traveling on the back of a truck and stealing a bale of hay from a nearby horse stable.
The performances that most defined the Ad Nauseam Project occurred in the mid-nineties.
3 Icons was a series of three nights of performances by different groups of musicians. Each night was devoted to a popular musical icon: James Brown, Can, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. A short segment of music (10-30 secs.) was chosen to represent each icon’s oeuvre. The segment was played as a repeated loop until the performers could not physically continue.
3.
The music in my installations and performances is the by-product of a concept, much like the background noise of everyday life. The concepts are usually conceived from personal history and are actualized through intimate interaction of performer and spectator. In Grubic’s Cube, the spectator intimately participates by actively inhibiting the movements of the performers with the spectator’s own breath. The focus of Grubic’s Cube is controlled and distanced intimacy, not a mediocre jazz band playing Girl from Ipanema.
4.
Repetition and exhaustion are used in some of my performances much like they are used in ecstatic religious experience- as a vehicle to go outside oneself. On the other hand, I also use repetition and exhaustion to illustrate a more mundane, profane experience. There is a rich palette in their qualities. More recently, thanks to collaborations with Eric Pifeteau and Federico Pelligrini, I have incorporated layers of even more varied states of repetition and exhaustion, further enriching the experience.
In Grubic’s Cube, a light and festive atmosphere is created by the many balloons and pleasant music. There is laughing and dancing and a general feeling of well-being. At the same time, there are people in a cage performing a grueling task to the point of exhaustion, and the happy, laughing people are making that task harder by constricting the movements of the caged players. This is a classic Ad Nauseam Project piece.