Secession is 10 years old. The 22nd of September 1998 Secession launch was a lively event hosted by Toy Satellite on Smith Street, Fitzroy with a cast of firsts under that hood.
Founder of Synesthesia Records, Mark Harwood, played his first gig there and John Power lit up the venue with his first projected, live video mix.
The launch was video streamed to an international audience of enthusiasts and I was engrossed in a generative Lost Time Accident performance that kicked off our first release, a series of generatively composed works titled, Age to Wonder At.
From 1999 to 2000 Secession ran the ESC experimental sound and music series and produced the Unseen / Unheard interactive audio visual sessions in Melbourne.
We co-produced the Return to Timor millennium eve concert in Aliu, East Timor and contributed to the formative years of the This Is Not Art Festival.
In 2001 Secession artists performed Undercurrents, produced by Andrew Garton, at the opening of the Taipei International Arts Festival. Undercurrents was also performed at the Fringe Fashion Awards, Melbourne International Film Festival, Multimedia Asia Pacific Festival and This is Not Art.
We believe we may have even published the first podcast out of Australia. In November 2004 we commenced Sound Information with the release of Some Rights Reserved works destined for use by podcast producers the world over. We had also been a Creative Commons early adopter.
In 2004 Ollie Olsen and Steve Law joined me at the helm… we released some works through our site, but joint releases are yet to come… personal stuff, 21st century stuff… the stuff of life hindered and yet expanded us.
Secession has consistently applied itself to music and sound works that extend the capabilities of our artists, that challenges and excites, that inspires and reflects the common attributes of diversity in a world suffering the dynamics of economies that deplete natural resources and enclose creative and cultural endeavour in protections that stifle innovation, breeding sameness and a dangerously dull, careless society.
Andrew Garton
