1976-1978

Installation, variable dimensions.
Materials: 33 music stands, 32 playing cards double sided, 34 small boxes, metal, cardboard

Collection: Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris.

Excerpt of the conversation between Robert Filliou (RF) and Irmeline Lebeer (IL), Flayosc, France, August 1976.

RF: ‘Telepathic Music.’ I have all the texts. The first one, Telepathic Music No.1, I sent to friends in Canada, but Telepathic Music No.2 is the same. It’s part of Research on the Eternal Network. We have the text, in German and English, from 1973. Someone translated it. It was on music stands, 50 music stands in a garden, so you could read from both sides. It was already bilingual.

IL: Is this a work or a performance?

RF: It’s a work. It’s in the framework of Research on the Eternal Network, which we already spoke about. It’s the thing from ADA in Berlin [in 1973]. There I did Telepathic Music No.2, dedicated to my Canadian friends. And I should say that Charlotte Moorman also did it for her festival, in 1975. She rented a whole sports field. You know they have electronic displays for the scores. She asked me for a text, and I sent her this, in English: ‘Concentrating silently, sending waves of greeting, whether luck, men luck, women luck, to any or all the members of the Eternal Network.’ And it happened. People who saw it have told me it was very, very good. It was a big thing. Suddenly letters appeared in light. There were probably thousands of people, and this was on the signboards.

                The original thing was on music stands. They’re all rusty, because they were outside in a garden. I’d like to reproduce this one under ‘Telepathic Music’, and I’d also like to reproduce some photos of the cards from Telepathic Music No.5, the thing I just made with Gibson. And the exhibtion now, in America, at Dartmouth College. I write down: No.5: photo Gibson. No.2 and No.5.

IL: Are there other numbers? What are they?

RF: I don’t remember. No.1 is the one I made with the alphabet I invented. I sent it to Ken Friedman and without asking me he gave it as a present to the art school in Vancouver. They were index cards like the ones we use, and it was the same text, but written in my own alphabet. There were about a hundred of those. They had to be deciphered, along with the alphabet. He asked me to send them for a travelling exhibition he was doing and then gave them to the university in Vancouver. Which is fine. They have it now. They sent me a letter to tell me they have the documents. It is too long to remake; there are more than a hundred things. The alphabet is part of the colour of languages, with the little men. It’s part of the Poïpoïdrome.