A 150-Pound Cube Is Giving Out Free Electronic Music in Berlin

There are 20-somethings in this world—this author included—who were torrenting music before they hit puberty. “You wouldn’t download a car,” anti-piracy videos urged us. “Yes, we would,” us tweens retorted. For us, digital music has always been immaterial, and always free. But some musicians, like producer and DJ Jan Jelenik, owner of experimental electronic label Faitiche, are still fascinated with the physical forms music can take, and how to reconcile the inevitable free sharing of digitized music with the desire to tie it to a physical form. Now, Jelenik is giving away a compilation of his music for free, but those who want it are required to make a pilgrimage to the Temple-cube, a nearly-immovable, 150-pound, roughly one-square-foot concrete cube containing WAV files and digitized album artwork will be installed at Berlin’s Image Movement through July 5.

In 2013, Faitiche released Temple of Faitiche, a vinyl compilation of unreleased works by Jelenik made between then and 2010. The release was not only limited, but also in a bulky physical format, didn’t come with a download code, and wasn’t available on CD. In order to make the pieces available to a larger audience, especially listeners that prefer digital formats, Jelenik created the Temple-cube, an austere object into which visitors can plug their laptops and download the album. Jelenik tells The Creators Project that it’s “an operation that doesn’t go without difficulties,” and in the past he’s photographed people struggling to maneuver the USB, which sticks out of the freestanding cube, into their laptops. Taking a literally concrete approach to the digitization—and therefore, reproducibility—of music, Jelenik prefers to play with the idea of free data as an artwork than see his music circulate online the new old-fashioned way.

“Every guest is more than welcome to connect her/his laptop to the Temple-cube and copy my work,” Jelenik tells The Creators Project. “Data exchange, usually deterritorialized, is getting locatable.”

To celebrate the Temple-cube’s residence at Image Movement, on June 22 Jelenik performed a modular synth set at the concept store, which was created by the Berlin-, London- and Los Angeles-based gallery, Sprüth Magers. The intimate space, with interiors designed by artists Rosemarie Trockel and Thea Djordjadjze, sells hard-to-find artist films and records. The store also hosts a regular program of screenings and events, contextualizing Jelenik’s performance as an intimate, artistic one, rather than a danceable DJ set. In 2008, he told Resident Advisor that he felt “unlucky” with playing improvisational shows in Berlin, and was considering the idea of playing “shows which are not shows, just sessions open to the public.” The Image Movement set instead consisted of improvisations of pieces on Temple, giving new life to older material.

“Most of the material is more than three years old and I’m actually not able to reproduce it anymore,” Jelenik explains. “Naturally I look back on such old material with a certain amount of distance, which can be helpful: Feeling detached from my own work sounds like an ideal situation.”

As an artist known for performing on a laptop, Jelenik's interests in the physical formats music can take might come as a surprise. In the compact disc, for instance, he sees a transport mechanism, a way to get audio files from pressing plant to personal computer. While they seem hilariously out-of-date, Jelenik still sells them, largely to the Japanese market, where the vinyl revival didn’t catch on like it did elsewhere, but the “objectness” of music is still popular.

“That’s exactly what I’m interested in as well: Finding ways to materialize music information," Jelenik says. "Probably because I love to judge music by looking at its cover.”

The Temple-cube will be installed at Image Movement in Berlin from June 22 until July 5. Find more information here. Jelenik performed a DJ set at Echo Bücher in Berlin on June 25, on the occasion of Faitiche artist Andrew Pekler’s upcoming album Tristes Tropiques.

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