Audiences usually get to hear their music in such a formalised, highly structured way, that when it is unformalised, it sounds incoherent to them. Most music organisational devices are about taming what seems to me to be the natural unruliness of music. I mean it is not just about packaging, it is about taming. And this might be how music becomes acceptable. But if you work outside those structures, then I suppose it makes sense that people who rely on those structures, can't tell what the hell is going on.
Excerpt from an interview with Derek Bailey, August 1996
WIELS artist-in-residency Nathalie Guilmot and Belgian artist Yves Coussement each develop an individual practice, but they also collaborate under the name Guilmot & Coussement. Their desire is to go further and use two voices to create a new form of musicality, in which experimentation and improvisation play a key role.
Although their individual practices differ, both artists share a meticulous approach and a metaphysical intensity. In their collaborative practice, the artists try to reach a symbiosis and to create a sort of vibration that would exceed boundaries in terms of form and content and build a bridge between the conscious and the subconscious.
By doing so, Guilmot & Coussement show that it is possible to share the same territory, transcend boundaries and work together without compromises. Through their collaboration, they position themselves as two artists coming from two specific Belgian communities but who are now operating, individually and collectively, from the central position of Brussels.