by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

Paradoxes abound in considering Black_Box, the installation/event materializing at Usine C this weekend. Is it about thinking outside of the box, or living inside it? Is it about dancing as the future blooms, or fiddling while Rome burns? Is it a performance in an environment, or vice versa?

Simplified, Black_Box is four giant, central screens in a cube-shaped room decked out with top-gun quadraphonic sound. It's the brainchild of Purform, which is VJ Yan Breuleux and electronic composer Alain Thibault, also co-founder of the Elektra fest, for which Black_Box is an off-season event and a collab with the I Love Neon crew.

"This is an aesthetic, but also a very physical, experience," explains Thibault. "You have to get involved in the piece - at some point you are part of it."

The thinking-man's techno of Thibault and Breuleux's abstract visuals breathe dark, foreboding life into the Box. "When we hear about black boxes in the media, it is always after a catastrophe, an air crash. Black_Box is a memory which has a short time span. In my work, this means bringing in cultural elements that are happening right now, but erase by themselves progressively.

"In the music there are some very emotional moments that trigger strange sensations over very repetitive, mechanical elements, to create a contrast. But we all react differently. Personally, techno triggers in me very specific emotions. I like the fact that people are dancing to music made with machines. There is some kind of contradiction between this very physical experience and the way the music is being made."

There's a healthy contrast, too, between Purform's lofty notions and the down 'n' dirty electro party of the Neon kids, who will be making good use of the technical possibilities the Box offers on Saturday night after the Purform set. Maybe that's the Rome-in-flames part?

"During all those nights spent dancing to this music made with machines," muses Thibault about techno, "I was thinking that humans could not go further away in terms of physical sensations, that we were on the edge of something, a way of life that could crumble anytime."

At Usine C on Friday, May 16, 10pm, $10, and on Saturday, May 17, 10pm, $20 (with Tiga, Black Strobe,
Jordan Dare & the Kosa Bros.)

>> Music Listings