Mounir Fatmi's striking work frequently explores the
complex cultural dynamics produced by the global
circulation and 'translation' of people, objects and ideas.
Alternative global forces are ambivalently contested
through the creation of transcultural objects, such as the
discs that allude simultaneously to Islamic hadiths,
machinery and Duchamp'sRotoreliefs.Symbols of 'Islam'
are desacralised, while being re-oriented to question
reductive perceptions of Islam and the tendency to
polarise Muslim and non-Muslim cultures. Mixology
was first produced as work of video art (2010, 11'4), in
which two black spinning discs painted with white Islamic
calligraphic hadiths appear as records on a DJ's mixing
table. A complex montage of shots displays the DJ's
hands scratching or spinning the records and manipulating
the controls. The visuals are accompanied by an equally
complex mixture of distorted, often piercing, electronic
sounds and excerpts of classical music over the
unsettling noise produced by the record-player needle as
it scrapes away at the paint.

The CD consists of sounds made during the creation of
this video. Each of the eight tracks superimposes – or
alternates between – ready-made fragments of classical
music and improvised electronic sounds, together with
disconcerting noises generated by the turning
discs and other, at times unidentifiable, processes. (The
excerpts of classical music are taken from Beethoven's
Symphony no. 9 in D minor (opus 125, 'Choral'), Symphony
no. 6 in F major (opus 68 , 'Pastoral') and 'The Creatures
of Prometheus' (opus 43), as well as Mozart's Requiem.)
The polyphonic interplay of discrepant sounds is
reminiscent of Edward Said's characterisation of cross
cultural encounters in terms of a 'contrapuntal ensemble';
each sound is 'alternately privileged', increasing or
decreasing in volume, or becoming inaudible. However,
Mounir Fatmi's ensemble foregrounds dissonance and
disharmony. The order integral to the classical music is
perpetually disrupted by sounds and rhythms that resist
musical systems and that are identical only to themselves.
This use of sound heightens the ambivalence produced
visually by the cover image of a spinning vinyl painted with
Islamic calligraphy, encouraging the recognition of
'untranslatability' in cultural encounters.

Siobhán Shilton, University of Bristol