Étant Donnés

About

Étant Donnés, the French duo of Eric and Marc Hurtado, forged a path through the industrial landscape with mechanical precision and relentless innovation. Emerging from the shadows of the 1980s, their work focused on manipulating tape and found sound, constructing sonic collages that reverberated with textural experimentation. Their name, borrowed from Marcel Duchamp's evocative tableau, reflects a fascination with layers of perception and hidden narratives. The Hurtado brothers' early ventures, captured in "Tapes 1977-1983" (VINYL ON DEMAND / VOD-RECORDS), document a raw and exploratory phase. This release, alongside others like "L'Eclipse" (Staalplaat) and "Le Sens Positif" (DMA2), showcases their penchant for blurring the lines between audio and visual, the functional and the abstract. Their use of diverse formats—cassettes, reels, VHS—demonstrates an unwavering commitment to the tactile and the ephemeral. Étant Donnés' collaborations further expanded their dystopian soundscape, notably joining forces with Michael Gira of Swans fame. This partnership, along with affiliations with avant-garde labels like Staalplaat and Bain Total, positioned them as pivotal figures in a scene that favored the percussive chaos of industrial beats and the metronomic pulse of machinery. Their work, often compared to contemporaries like P16.D4 and Z'EV, remains a testament to the duo's ability to transform noise into narrative, creating a relentless audio-visual journey through the forgotten and the foreboding.