JUNG AN TAGEN

Jung An Tagen invites us to reflect on the diffuse but persistent term “experimental” not as deviation from aesthetic orthodoxy, but as the design and implementation of compositional systems that offer unpredictable results; “electronic” as an annulment of the previous instrumental tradition, and as a simultaneous reversion towards aesthetic openness; as the fragmentation of a theoretical or mythical musical syntax by obsessive repetition, sequential motivic mutations, aleatoric arrays, pareidolic illusions and moiré effects; “electronic” as the ultimate split, dehumanisation, mechanic strangeness.

Backed up by 2 decades of discographic activity under diverse pseudonyms and multiple collaborations on labels such as Editions Mego and Diagonal, Stefan Juster performs tirelessly at Festivals like Unsound or Sonic Acts, researching the boundaries of techno and dissociative computer music. Testing strategies of physical disorientation and forceful sonic phenomena, encouraging minds and bodies to calculate and intuit their own place in spacetime. It’s addictive music. Music in constant explosion.


In 2020 Jung founded the netlabel label ETAT.xyz. Setting aside any hint of expressionist gestures, one is left with form and abstract sound, emotional alienation: “dissociative, psychoacoustic, computer music”. Since 2019 Jung An Tagen is collaborating with the filmmaker Rainer Kohlberger on audio-visual performances that conquer the observer’s perceptual apparatus and transports the audience into the presence of an immediate immensity, where boundaries of self and world become obscured.

Jung’s body of work as a filmmaker stands squarely in the tradition of abstract conceptual experimental film. Through the application of newest technologies, he succeeds in updating this tradition in a manner aesthetically suited to the 21st century.

"Barely adhering to established syntaxes of rhythm, melody, and timbre, Jung An Tagen seems to want to rewrite the rule book when it comes to electronic music. He's off to a hell of a start."

The Wire