HERE COMES THE MAMMOTH

The group Les Reines Prochaines (Future Queens) comprises
some of the most important contemporary Swiss artists. It was in 1988 that two
artists of the Basel School of Art won first prize at the Feminale festival in
Cologne and The International Film and Video Festival in Luzern with their
videos Painting and The Female Speed Reducer is Whizzing.
The two authoresses of the awarded videos were Muda Mathis and Pippilotti
Rist. Thus began the success story of a loose women’s group which combined
the tradition of accidental performances with the artistic concept of professional
dilletantism. It is difficult to label Les Reines Prochaines. Their emergence was
first marked by the album Potatas in 1988. From then on, music has
remained the focal point of their art, around which performances, movement,
installations, concerts and videos are centred.
Up to their latest show entitled Here Comes the Mammoth, many female
artists have already taken the position as ‘future queens’, including
Pippilotti Rist, Regina Floria Schmid and Theresa Alonso. Les Reines Prochaines
currently consists of original members Muda Mathis and Fränzi Madörin, and of
Gaby Streiff, Sus Zwick and Sibylle Hauert, who joined the group later. Apart
from participating in the group, each female artist has her own independent
career.
“Our procedure is progressive, conceptual and associational.
Individual and group artistic work intertwine and complement each other to form
an artistic whole. Music and performances are marked by our inner images,
presentiments, memories, experiences and phantasies, which all spring up from
our individual, political and cultural realities. Trivialities, myths, pop
culture, folklore, childhood and the physical all serve as sparks of
inspiration for the form and the content of our work. Our compositions are
minimalistic, radically thrifty and luxuriously simple. Apart from the
discipline of perception we also use the arbitrariness of chance. Music is the
most important element, while the lyrics are in different languages. We play
synthesizer, bass guitar, percussion, accordion, guitar, clarinet, trumpet,
flute and traditional horn. Toy-instruments and small hammers, with their
unusual uses, also play a major role in this. We can all play all of the above
instruments, although some of us do not actually use every single one.”
The magnificent ‘sovereigns’ stemming from below the Alps
claim that the music in Here Comes the Mammoth is “good and pleasing
to the ear of an audience with endurance.” The lyrics sung in English,
French, German or Spanish are a somewhat different matter. At first sight they
might appear as if coming from a naive child, but only at first sight.
“I had a dream I was King Kong/I was an ape and very
strong/and in my hand I held a maid/ I looked down and I was afraid! The maid I
held in my hand it was me too and I can’t believe it believe it believe it
believe it ... the maid I held in my fist it was me too and I kissed my own
face my own face my own face ...” (Alberta 1999)
The music is the centre; and this centre determines all the other
elements which follow the music. This principle applies to video too. Although
it might seem that the camera should function as an extension of the artist’s
eye, Muda Mathis frequently ignores looking through the lens, and, instead,
moves around, thus causing the camera to film the images produced by her
movement. “I don’t trust my watchful, selective eye; it sees things too
academicaly. The point is to find new images.” The images found in the aesthetics
of Les Reines Prochaines are everyday actualities, fantastic scenes,
conversations, dancing; all of which is enriched with colourfulness and energy.
Here Comes the Mammoth is a “big, thick cake of
bodypoems, scientific lectures, tricks, sounds, lightgames and songs. It’s a
performance about dangers, miracles and early history.”
The show premiered on September 1st in Switzerland.

The guest performance is organised by Mesto
žensk/ City of Women
In cooperation with KUD France Prešeren
With the support of Pro Helvetia