Kim Gordon, an artistic career made of ups and downs

Published on October 5, 2024 at 3:37 p.m. / Modified on October 5, 2024 at 5:00 p.m.

At the beginning of the 1990s, the Reading festival traditionally ended with a sequence that we would no longer dare to film today: in the campsite adjoining the stages and the marquees, a gigantic bonfire was improvised in which all were swung plastic waste accumulated over three days of celebration. The site was then covered with a low ceiling of acrid smoke, the color of a seal, which caused the public to scurry towards the station, where they had to wait for trains which were also traditionally late.

In August 1991 in Reading (county of Berkshire, about forty kilometers west of London), we attended several important concerts: Nirvana (their name was still written in medium letters in the middle of the poster) , Iggy Pop, De La Soul, The Sisters of Mercy… On Friday the 23rd, it was Sonic Youth’s turn on the big stage: the New York masters of avant-garde noise rock had released Goo a year earlier and were preparing the release of Dirty in 1992, two records which would bring them a much wider level of recognition – the group had signed with the major Geffen, and was breaking out of the underground. On drums, Steve Shelley; on guitars, Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore (who at the start of the concert made his guitar wave like a Morbier pendulum). And on bass: Kim Gordon. Thirty-three years later, this major figure in the cultural landscape honors us with a visit to Switzerland: a unique date, solo, on October 29 at the Dampfzentrale in Bern, as part of his Collective Tour which will travel throughout Europe during the autumn.

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