I just put this video online which is a collaboration of Mats Gustafsson and myself dating from 2002.
The story behind this originates from when I first read an article in The Wire about Thurston and Mats playing their first gig as a duo at the Empty Bottle in Chicago late Nineties I'm guessing. Described as "...people dropping their jaws on the floor in bewilderment..." I had yet to hear the two play together but in my mind the two sounds were already compromised, at least in my fantasy they were. Some years later I was thinking about it again and thought: how could I make those compromises a true event and not just in my head.
This was a year after I graduated and had done some (experimental) filming of portraits of people. I deceided to sent Mats, whom I knew from filming some performances, a ten minute video piece for him to score and give a title.
I asked him if he could contact Thurston and ask if he would be interested in doing the same. This way i would have two pieces with the same visual score yet differently scored and could compare the two as playing the same score.
Some months later I embarked on my first Murray Street european tour with SY, shooting their performances. I was invited backstage in Switserland and had a chance to talk some about my little project. I asked Thurston if he had heard from Mats and told him about the video score. He said this could be done.
The tour ended and we met again in Eindhoven some months after. I handed thurston all my video tapes from the tour as well as the video score. We talked briefly and the day ended as I drove home.
The video never got scored by T unfortunately, knowing these guys have loads of other stuff to do.
I did get a cd by Mats at the beginning of 2003 with the instructions of where to put the music in the video. Another cd was send in by Phil Niblock with whom I did an internship some years before as i wanted a three screen video installation for this. In the end result I just made the piece with Mats and it never got screened.
It's called 'Dream Investigation - her head is falling' and to make this story short, you can find it here -
http://www.myspace.com/jefmertens