ERIKM


Nationality: French
also belongs to the group: LEVOX

eRikm appeared on the art scene in 1992. His beginnings in sculpture and visual art and music (as guitarist) led him to sound composition and disc jockeying. Known as a sound artist since 1996, he moves across "independent" and "institutional" system-worlds as well as territories (France - international).
We know eRikm mainly for his musical oeuvre as turntablist and sound performer; but we are less well acquainted with his visual work, in which video has been in the ascendancy since 2007, even if he began using it in the early 2000s.
Among other features, his musical pieces resort to low-budget Kaoss Pad samplers annularly arranged to form a loop that creates feedback out of nothing except maybe itself and tends to eliminate the original sound component. In eRikm's visual pieces we find a similarity of attitude and touch, with an emphasis on short sequences or fragments “digitally explored in terms of the disembodiment, fragmentation and generational synthesis of one or more elements.” Several of his videos explore the idea of the deletion – the disappearance – of the partial data he offers, via transformation systems as random as they are unlikely; we are often left to deal with an instability that denies us any recourse to a figurative or narrative element. Faced with these kinds of systems, we sift through them and try to understand what happens in each case, with the diversity of operations and the plasticity of the recordings tending to sidetrack us, according to how much the information has been degraded.
Videos have a special importance for eRikm, as was clear in two recent exhibitions that highlighted his visual side with a host of installations, drawings, photos and sculptures. The pieces on show underscored the artist's concern with the visual aspect of his work and with creation of environments as much as of specific objects. On today's scene the visual element often underpins a musician's work by filling out the performance space: as if sound were not enough and needs to be backed up with virtuoso, spectacular or monumental visual input. But eRikm's use of video and projection has a deliberately non-spectacular edge, which builds into each work the possibility of not being understood or appropriately perceived; this is demandingly the case of “aUTOPORTRAIT ”, to which I shall return later, and also – in a similar but distinctive way – “va©uum”, whatever the form of its presentation. Over the years, the number of collaborations will grow, just as the audiences and the temperaments: Luc Ferrari, Christian Marclay, Claire Denis, Bernard Stiegler, Jean-Luc Nancy ... so many happy "co-incidences" that punctuate this search of transmutation, this multi-level play.

— yann beauvais, 2010

16 MOVIES IN DISTRIBUTION

ZOME - ゾム
2018 / Performance / color / sound / single screen / 21' 18 / 87 €
distribution: Digital file on server
AUSTRAL
2009 / Mini DV / color / sound / single screen / 21' 47 / 106 €
distribution: Digital file on server
HOPIS - Simulacre series 2/3
2009 / Video / color / sound / 4' 18 / 34 €
distribution: Digital file on server
PARTS - Simulacre series 3/3
2009 / Video / color / sound / 5' 16 / 39 €
distribution: Digital file on server
  AUTOPORTRAIT
2008 / Mini DV / color / sound / single screen / 5' 38 / 28 €
distribution: DCP on server or Digital file on server
  GENERESCENCE SOUSTRACTIVE
2008 / Mini DV / color-b&w / sound / single screen / 7' 56 / 28 €
distribution: Mini DV
LUX PAYLLETTES
2008 / HD / b&w / sound / single screen / 32' 32 / 124 €
distribution: Digital file on server
VA©UUM
2008 / Mini DV / color / sound / single screen / 40' 52 / 170 €
distribution: Mini DV
  CORNER
2007 / Mini DV / b&w / sound / single screen / 2' 47 / 23 €
distribution: Digital file on server
  CORRELATION I
2007 / Mini DV / color / sound / single screen / 8' 44 / 35 €
distribution: Mini DV
  DIGICODE
2007 / Mini DV / color / silent / single screen / 2' 27 / 22 €
distribution: Digital file on server
  HQME
2007 / Mini DV / color / sound / single screen / 7' 47 / 27 €
distribution: Digital file on server
FRAGS - Simulacre series 1/3
2006 / color / sound / 5' 26 / 39 €
distribution: Digital file on server
  CAUSE & EFFECT
2004 / Mini DV / color / sound / single screen / 1' 35 / 18 €
distribution: Digital file on server
  DEPRESSIVE FIGHTER I & II
2003 / Mini DV / color / sound / single screen / 4' 53 / 23 €
distribution: Digital file on server
  E*M
2003 / Mini DV / color / sound / single screen / 4' 01 / 23 €
distribution: Mini DV