Marginal Consort

On the occasion of Mike Kelley: Ghost and Spirit, a new travelling retrospective devoted to one of America’s most influential artists of the late twentieth-early twenty-first centuries at the Bourse de Commerce — Pinault Collection, Paris, Blank Forms presents a series of concerts reflecting the importance of music in the work of Kelley's work.

Marginal Consort is a Japanese collective improvisation group founded by musician Kazuo Imai in 1997. The ensemble members were handpicked by Imai from the East Bionic Symphonia, an earlier group assembled from students who attended the first class of artist and composer Takehisa Kosugi at Bigakko, a radical art school in Tokyo in the 1970s. Marginal Consort has performed one concert in Japan annually since their founding (skipping 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic), and occasionally accepting additional foreign invitations. Each performance is highly variable: beside the venue and the length—always at least three hours—the group never discusses the event’s structure before the show. They prefer to perform in broad flat spaces, scattering members to the corners of the room. Sound-making devices include bamboo and wood sticks, stones, marbles, handmade electronics, water, and other natural elements or quotidian objects. Members perform individually, inviting coincidental combinations that merge and morph as the audience moves around the space, creating a highly personal and participatory sonic environment. Current participants include Imai, engineer Kei Shii, artist Masami Tada, and musician Tomonao Koshikawa. 

Co-presented by Unsound and PAN. 

See also, Dick Slessig Combo and Sun Ra Arkestra + KESSWA.