Text by Agata Kik
(…) doing music alone is a solitary process that I see as a shelter. Releasing others’ music instead is made of dialogues and facilitating everything around it. —David August on the record label and artistic platform 99CHANTS
In the beginning, there was nothing really I expected, just to be independent —composer-producer David August reflects on the record label and artistic platform 99CHANTS that he founded in 2018 and has since been oscillating between Rome and Berlin. Most recently, the platform presented its new series Tenendo per mano il futuro (Holding the future by the hand) in London at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA).
The platform does not focus on any particular format or genre but aims to produce meaningful cultural artifacts in images, text, or sound. Going back to the root of things, each installation of 99CHANTS strives to reflect the character of the particular point in time and space in which it originated. I think we can learn from the past and better understand the present and where we want to be in the future. Looking backwards at times can actually mean going forward.
While the artworks of 99CHANTS reimagine what the future could be, the name ‘chant’ originates in ancient and medieval literature, pointing to the format in which music was first known. David August adds we find ourselves in a continuous healing process from past traumas. In the ethos of environmental sustainability and in the form of artistic recycling and recovery, 99CHANTS is quintessentially contemporary. The works revive past realities and find relevance in modern-day society while seeking a positive impact spiritually and environmentally. For example, the platform released a solar panel that generates sound and works as a modulation source for modular synthesisers while using renewable energy.
Even though 99 implies something unfinished, 99CHANTS is a finite project and will end on its 99th release. I liked to connect the label’s destiny to the nature of things, as cheesy as it sounds, David August reveals. In the day of capitalist accelerationist tendencies and wasteful abundance of things, the concept of finiteness seems an interesting approach, urging for even more care and dedication to producing new conscious artistic work. Even though 99CHANTS is preoccupied with releasing music and championing artists that they believe are important for our contemporaneity, the physical gatherings bridging between the audience and the artworks, like at the ICA or Aktionshaus in Berlin, are something the platform would like to pay more attention to in the future. A physical gathering invites you to play in different formats and scenography.
Nevertheless, regarding the scarcity of time, energy, and funding, event-based curatorial practice and public programming have become ever more challenging in the world of precarious instability. David August still declares that Sharing these precious moments of peace and awe is nothing we take for granted and something we deeply need to stay hopeful about. The appreciative audience and the followers’ support justify the label’s efforts and make collective experiences feel rewarding, simultaneously sowing seeds in each endeavour for every next happening to fruit and blossom.
At the ICA, the first iteration of the 99CHANTS’s series featured live sound performances by Valentina Magaletti, VISIO, and an interdisciplinary collaboration between Moroccan calligraphy artist Hiba Baddou and David August. Straight upon arrival, one would walk into the darkness of the vast ICA’s stage space. The room was packed with breathing bodies and shooting sounds of medieval sonic imagery interspersed with transmuted vocals from another reality, and the night temporarily turned into a hyperspatial hell when artist Nicola Tirabasso, aka VISIO, opened the evening of artistic acts from the Otherworld. In my opinion, the experience starts the moment you enter the doors! Exclaims David August. Red light coming from afar; what a bleeding beauty; what an avalanche of affective music! The flesh trembles while phantasmic growling overwhelms the space. The intergalactic digital meets the medieval analogue. Valentina Magaletti starts their show by playing with objects scattered on the floor. Most physically in their form, the drums shake the inner bones.
Valentina Magaletti’s body bounces on every beat, and the physical presence seems dispersed in the ether of the event. A soundtrack of prerecorded sounds and voices mixes with the raw resonance of the virtuously vibrating vessels. Then, the final performance goes out into the audience. David August admits I liked the idea of bringing to an audience a non-linear experience, but rather a programming that would surprise them, let them move around and shift attention to different parts of the room. The attention shifts when Hiba Baddou soaks huge brushes in black ink, writing her body on white paper sheets.
Hanging down and rolled out all over the flooring, the paper becomes a stage for an improvised dance between the word and the artist’s corporeality. As the language is spoken by August, sound finds its mirror image in the unknown lettering. Music remains untranslatable in words, though its meaning is felt physically. David August comments on the curatorial thinking: I thought it was important to focus on a main act that embodies movement and rhythm for the two events in Berlin and London. Both Mohammad Reza Mortazavi in Berlin and Valentina Magaletti in London showed a masterclass and were a guiding force for both events, I would say. At the same time, artists such as Ludwig Wandinger, Hiba Baddou, Nastya Vogan or Visio reflected more on the upcoming generation. What interests me the most is taking inspiration from both experienced artistry and progressive contemporary language.
Reflecting on his personal music practice, besides curating, programming and producing 99CHANTS, David August adds: I’d say that I’ve been mostly working from an introspective field for the last years. Observing and questioning were the main practices I tried to translate into music. It all made sense, and I enjoyed these processes, but it felt like it was time to let myself go again to more energetic languages. On June 14, 2024, August released his latest EP titled WORKOUTS — a collection of four tracks which (he) see(s) as “studies” of rhythm and movement in a way that did not appear in (his) previous works so far. Produced in conversation with the earlier album VĪS, organically continuing from the work released previously, WORKOUTS is the first time David August has turned to club music since 2000.
Personal practice never exists on its own, and in the case of David August’s work, it is much inspired by running 99CHANTS: Running a label, besides doing music yourself, always confronts you with new discoveries. It brings people together, and I find joy in helping someone else’s vision come to life. I also draw inspiration from these processes as they switch your attention from your private work and put you into different perspectives.
