A Tier II

Étant Donnés.

French ritual / post-industrial duo · the brothers Eric Hurtado (b. 1959) and Marc Hurtado (b. 1962), born in Rabat, Morocco · the longest-running French industrial act and the centre of gravity of the French scene · recording from the late 1970s and consolidated as a duo by 1980, working a body-and-voice strain of field recording, found sound and incantatory vocals · named after Marcel Duchamp's last work Étant donnés · later collaborations with Genesis P-Orridge, Alan Vega, Lydia Lunch, Michael Gira and Vomir

filed under
Post-industrial · ritual and incantatory sound · field recording and voice rather than rhythm or riff · a wall of concrete noise put to the service of text and the body
The Hurtado brothers as a lifelong duo · recording from the late 1970s onward · roughly thirty albums and a parallel body of experimental film · the French scene's most sustained and most internationally connected act
MembersThe brothers Eric Hurtado (b. 1959) and Marc Hurtado (b. 1962) · born in Rabat, Morocco · a duo across the whole of the project's life
FormedFrance · the project's earliest tape recordings date to 1977–1979 and the duo is generally dated to 1980; the Bureau files it as a late-1970s formation consolidated by 1980 · the early work was made, in the duo's own account, without any conventional instruments
The nameTaken from Marcel Duchamp's last major work, Étant donnés: 1° la chute d'eau, 2° le gaz d'éclairage · a deliberate placing of the project in the lineage of the French avant-garde rather than of rock
MethodField recordings, found sound and sometimes whispered, sometimes violent vocals · the voice and the body as the central instruments, the word treated as an object · an oppressive wall of white and grey noise put to ritual and poetic use
FilmA parallel body of experimental film from 1982 to 1994 · the project worked across music, film, performance and poetry rather than as a band in the ordinary sense
Key collaborationsAlan Vega of Suicide, Genesis P-Orridge, Lydia Lunch, Michael Gira of Swans, Mark Cunningham, Bachir Attar of the Master Musicians of Jajouka, and Vomir · an unusually wide reach into the international post-industrial and no-wave worlds
Selected worksRe-Up (1999, Les Disques du Soleil et de l'Acier) with Alan Vega, Lydia Lunch and Genesis P-Orridge · Offenbarung und Untergang (1999, after Georg Trakl) with Michael Gira and Mark Cunningham · Royaume (Touch, 1991) · a catalogue of roughly thirty albums
Marc Hurtado laterContinued collaboration outward, including the Sniper album with Alan Vega · the brothers' work has been steadily reissued by labels including Rotorelief, Munster, Touch and Penultimate Press
Festivals and institutionsPerformances and exhibitions at Documenta in Kassel, The Kitchen in New York, the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, the Baltic in Newcastle, Sónar, the Biennale de Lyon, the Centre Pompidou, Berlin Atonal and the Transmusicales · a reach well beyond the cassette underground
PositionThe French scene's centre of gravity: its longest-running act, its most internationally connected, and the clearest bridge from the French underground out to the post-industrial world
StatusActive across a long run · continued recording, collaboration and reissue into recent years
Filed atartist file · etant-donnes.html · cross-filed under the France scene (S·010)
§ 01
Editorial
the centre of the French scene

Étant Donnés is the lifelong project of the brothers Eric and Marc Hurtado, born in Rabat and working in France from the late 1970s. The earliest tape recordings date to 1977 to 1979 and the duo is usually dated to 1980; the work was made, by their own account, without conventional instruments, built instead from field recordings, found sound, and the voice. The name is taken from Marcel Duchamp's last work, which places the project in the lineage of the French avant-garde from the start.

Their method is the opposite of the bruitist wing of the French scene. Where Vivenza treated industrial noise as a literal subject and Le Syndicat pursued noise for its own sake, Étant Donnés put an oppressive wall of white and grey noise to ritual and poetic use, with the word treated as an object and the body as the central instrument. It is a strain of post-industrial sound closer to ceremony than to music, and it gave the French scene a centre that was incantatory rather than mechanical.

The reach of the collaborations is what marks the project's standing: Alan Vega, Genesis P-Orridge, Lydia Lunch, Michael Gira, Bachir Attar and Vomir all passed through the work. The Bureau files Étant Donnés as the French scene's centre of gravity, the act through which the French underground connected most widely to the post-industrial world beyond France.

§ 02
Cross-references
Étant Donnés across the archive

Scene. Filed under the French scene at S·010 as its centre of gravity and longest-running act.

Collaborators in the archive. Tied to Genesis P-Orridge, Michael Gira and Vomir, all filed; co-compiled with Pacific 231 on VP 231.

Peers. The ritual wing of the French scene against Vivenza's bruitism and Le Syndicat's pure noise; adjacent to Geins't Naït.

Forms. A field-recording-and-voice practice that sits with dark ambient and the post-industrial field at large rather than at any single form.

§ 03
Coda
closing note

Étant Donnés is the French scene's long centre: a lifelong duo working a ritual, body-and-voice strain of post-industrial sound from the late 1970s onward, named from Duchamp and connected outward to Vega, Gira, P-Orridge and Vomir. Where the rest of the French scene was a network of brief projects, Étant Donnés simply kept going.

Filed at Tier II and cross-filed under the France scene at S·010, the file is held open against the brothers' continuation.

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