« Kill The Ego » by Rostarr & Soundwalk Collective

« Kill The Ego » by Soundwalk Collective & Rostarr

© 2008 Photo par Ron Patane

« Kill The Ego » from Soundwalk Collective & Rostarr

2008, New York City, USA
Client: MAC Créteil for Exit Festival and Manège Maubeuge for VIA Festival
Commission: Musical Film
Art Direction and Production: Label Dalbin, Paris
Publishing: Collectorserie, Digital Edition by Label Dalbin
Co-Production: Oversampling, NY
Artists: Rostarr & Soundwalk Collective
Curator: Charles Carcopino

USA / 2008 / video / 40’ / color
Digital Edition / 14,99€

“Kill the Ego” began as a song, as an epic 40-minute-long poem composed of 10 years of sound recordings made in New York between 1998 and 2008. The fragmented memories of poets and dominatrixes, of pimps and prophets, of visionaries and lost children – the gamut of stories from the street: of the most obscure corners, of underground unrest, intimate and universal biographies of Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx – Soundwalk Collective has captured and woven together the sounds, conversations, and songs of urbanity. The double-ended candle of decadent Lower East Side rock, the sharp-witted, ironic hip-hop of the high-numbered streets, cinema, art, form one soul, one body: New York, worn-in like baseball glove leather, its scrapes and tears reminiscent of the ear that René Char called “the passage of whispers.” So it is that Soundwalk’s sound design creators Stephan Crasneanscki and Dug Winningham have captured, in the street and the studio, the hope and sadness of the soul of New York.

At the beginning of the film “Kill the Ego”, the artist Rostarr meets with Soundwalk Collective, thanks to Label Dalbin, for an exposition at the cultural institution MAC Créteil. Rostarr, who lives and works in New York, has been invited to create a visual interpretation of Soundwalk Collective’ sound recordings.

After the meeting, Rostarr listened to the soundtrack on loop, split it into parts, and scripted each part before launching it into an art series documented by directors Jim Helton and Ron Patane. Inspired by the technique used in Henri-Georges Clouzot’s masterpiece “Le Mystère Picasso”, as well as the work of experimental filmmakers Stan Brakhage and Phil Solomon, the directors sought to give life to the creative process during the filming and editing.

Living in the spotlight, Rostarr is a warrior, armed with paint and ink. His mastery of movement and the boldness of his undertakings, an explosive fusion of broad, fluid strokes and streaks of reckless abandon, yields work that shows a full spectrum of creative inspiration and process. Each modulation in the sound composition is reproduced in his painting, which evolves before our eyes as a moving work of art. The stories surface and sink away, swelling and changing from representation to emotional reaction; from something heard to something felt. During the filming, the soundtrack was played ceaselessly – the sound merging with the painting in the artist’s studio. Later, during the editing, sound and image were formally mixed and gave birth to the aural and visual work that is the film “Kill the Ego”.

Created in 2008, “Kill the Ego” was presented at the international festival Exit, in Paris that same year, then at the contemporary art fair Fountain in 2009 in New York, and will be screened for the first time in its entirety on February, 26th 2010 at the Pompidou Center, Paris, as part of the Hors Pistes festival.