AUTHOR: IVO MARTINS
EDITION: Vienna Art Orchestra - Comemmorative Magazine for Mathias Rüegg 25 Years Career DATE: December 2002
The more importance we give to representation questions in music, the more it seems to assume, in our lives, an
inevitable centrality. Can we try to understand who represents who? Or if it is possible at all for someone to
represent something?
My generation inherited ideas from two or three generations before and the representation in this sense is a
process of reproduction and of mirror effect. We start to feel the danger of seeing the culture change into a
globality, where illusions are formed as omnipresent goods of consumption. Of course, everybody admits without
resentments that they treat culture as a question of fashion accessories that can be put on and taken out, but
music, due to its abstract character, will end as being a rumour, among trade-mark products. The image of
global music floats above the Planet as if it was an euphoric commercial hallucination. Coca-«jazz»-Cola, Nike,
«jazz, Just Do It», McDonald's, «jazz», Happy Meal. Do you know what cheap work is in a wealthy atmosphere?
I would like to dedicate this simple text to Matthias Rüegg for never having lost the sense of spirituality. One can
be so abstracted analyzing the beauty of the images as they are projected on the wall that simply doesn't realize
that the wall has been sold out
