Cosmin TRG - Ecstatic Data

Notes by the artist

Formulating questions is, to me, more valuable than coming up with answers. Often, when intentions can be articulated, there’s little space left for mystery. I find myself perpetually caught trying to express two horizons of time: an ahistorical, primordial time-before-time and a deep, uncanny future. I give up notions of control, and instead roll away from center towards the ambiguity. It’s a much more fruitful journey because it’s a movement that can take you towards other possibilities. The ritualistic notion of ecstasy is largely lost in the Anthropocene: the body high, the mental, the chemical have replaced, prosaically, a state of being that precedes language. In our current stage we extract, exploit and regurgitate vast amounts of digital ooze that has become our mode of being, flattening experience. Uniformity in conformity, ethically and aesthetically. Between our physicality and our projected avatars seeking dopamine hits and euphoric meltdowns: Ecstatic Data.

Cosmin TRG. A singular voice, an idiosyncratic approach of electronic music and a firm command of performance spaces have turned Cosmin TRG into one of left field music's ubiquitous figures. Throughout a career spanning more than 15 years, Berlin-based Romanian artist Cosmin Nicolae has built a diverse and iconoclastic catalog in the process. Beginning with his 2018 album Semnal on Opal Tapes and Hope This Finds You Well on his own imprint Fizic, Nicolae has cemented a meandering sonic practice that probes speculative intersections of electro-acoustic experiments, found sound, polyrhythmic excursions and fourth world tableaux. He has recently composed and sound designed theater projects such as Oedipus Rex for Teatro Antico di Siracusa (dir. Robert Carsen) and contemporary dance piece Oh Captain by Johnny McMillan for Staatsballet Berlin among others. With a deep-seated passion for cinema, he is currently in production with his second short film as well as developing his debut feature film as writer/ director. Ecstatic Data on Feral Note, his latest sonic offering, encapsulates this ongoing evolution, representing a synthesis of his diverse artistic pursuits.