THE UTOPIA OF A SOUNDSHOW ʻTELL ME ALL, SHOW ME NOTHINGʼ
CONTACT: Clara Meister clara@soundfair.net www.soundfair.net
INTRODUCTION
SOUNDFAIR - EXHIBITING MUSIC
SOUNDFAIR is an exhibition project based in Berlin that has set as its purpose the re-contextualization of music through the auditive exhibiting of music as unique artworks.
The goal of SOUNDFAIR is to establish a context for composed sound to be understood and consumed as an artwork: to exhibit composed sound as a means of artistic expression mainly without any visual component or implied visual or spatial strategy.
SOUNDFAIR presents these SOUNDOBJECTS in a context divorced from the more common contextualized role of music and sound as mass-produced items of entertainment or design.
SOUNDFAIR takes as a starting point changes in our habits of listening to and perception of music and sound due to its greatly increased availability (chiefly through digital reproduction and the internet). Less and less is music in and of itself the focus of our aural attentions; conversely music is increasingly contextualized and presented as merely one part of a larger medial package, in particular in combination with the visual. Not only are technologies changing and adapting but so is our own perception and consumption of music and sound.
SOUNDFAIR is creating, curating and producing performances, concerts and exhibition projects at irregular intervals.
UNREALIZED PROJECT
SOUNDSHOW ʻTELL ME ALL, SHOW ME NOTHINGʼ Without doubt the disciplines are mingling. In an exhibition context it may be possible to use the exhibition as an open platform to engage for example music and visual art without the dominance of either sight or hearing. This wish or utopia marks the starting point for SOUNDSHOW.
Not only are concerts staged in art related contexts but likewise music is visualized in many forms and various media. Many of these approaches though master only one of the disciplines which then comes as an accompaniment to the other; in exhibitions it is usually the audible that is the loser in this game. In a contemporary paragon the eye is champion over the ear. The idea is to make an exhibition which is visually so reduced that the ear is not thrown into any conflict with a visual counterpart. A work of art can solely be a work of sound. This should not be confused with ʻSound artʼ, where the installation i.e. the physical object is an inherent part of the work.
How do we ʻpictureʼ this empty show?
This idea asks for an exhibition with many spaces which function as compartments separating the individual sound works from each other. Unlike a concert or a CD, we don't separate the works through time, but through space. Sound, different to vision, ignores the digression of the listener. An averting of hearing is impossible and only spatial solutions can border in sound. Each space compartment would be exclusively filled with sound, whereas music and spoken word is also included here as ʻsoundʼ. Each sound work therefore would become a unique SOUNDOBJECT though it would be neither haptically nor visually present. (The aim being to keep even the technical equipment from view.) The individual spaces and the exhibition itself need to be curated as much as any ʻvisualʼ exhibition: the format of sound as the only parameter is not sufficient. Also the architecture needs to be examined closely as this exhibition could but should not as its main focus trigger a new approach to the white cube discussion. It is about filling a space and taking up time. Visual artists, musicians, and composers would be invited to contribute. © SOUNDFAIR 2011
INTRODUCTION OF THE FOUNDERS
CLARA MEISTER came to Berlin for her curatorial studies in 2002 and has worked for numerous international artist studios (among them Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Elmgreen&Dragset) and institutions (Haus der Kunst). Her main focus is curating performances as well as book exhibitions and film programs. Currently a PHD student at the Humboldt University in Berlin, she has published articles for artist catalogues and art magazines and curated exhibitions and discussion programs. She is co-editor of the journal MENT.
ARI BENJAMIN MEYERSʼ work is a form of productive sabotage that plays on an audience's expectations. He is continually developing musical and performative concepts that push the boundaries of current genres, expanding on his education as a conductor and composer. Born 1972 in New York, he studied at The Juilliard School and Yale University before traveling to Berlin as a Fulbright Scholar in 1996. In 2007 he served as music director for Il Tempo del Postino, part of the inaugural Manchester International Festival, where he worked closely with Matthew Barney, Olafur Eliasson, and Tino Sehgal, among others. With Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster he created two staged performances, NY.2022 for the Guggenheim in New York City and K.62/K.85 , which was commissioned by Performa '09. Currently he is collaborating with Anri Sala and Sejla Kameric on the Artangel-commissioned film, 1395 Days Without Red.
After his musical studies in Munich, THOMAS MAYER moved to Berlin in 2003 in order to study arts management in Berlin/Potsdam. Since then he is working for diverse projects between the categories of music, art and film and collaborates with international composers, artists and musicians. His experience in conceiving and producing projects ranges from orchestral Live-projects, to Internet operas, installations and performances. He is now producing the performances for
SOUNDFAIR. REALIZED PORJECTS (selection)
THE PERFORMANCE ʻSOLOʼ In ʻSOLOʼ only one audience member at a time is able to enter a small room and experience a 6-minute live performance by an opera singer. The composition echoes and explores the charged atmosphere provoked by the confined space and one-to-one relationship. After the singer exits, the audience member is invited to stay alone in the room as long as he or she would like before leaving. After a short pause, a new audience member is admitted and the performance begins anew.
ʻSOLOʼ creates a personal and intimate listening situation and transforms a very small space into a very small private concert hall. The space itself and the performance therein additionally take on the character of an installation, since the work can also be (partially) seen and (over-) heard from the outside. We see and hear only the performer – the audience member for whom she is performing is not visible for viewers of the installation. Composition by Ari Benjamin Meyers, photographs by Douglas Gordon.
THE PERFORMANCE ʻFAR FURTHER FANFARAʼ This open air music performance took place on the landing strip of Flughafen Tempelhof in Berlin, which had been closed for many years and only recently reopened as a public space. A concert by Balkan-speed-brass-band Fanfara Kalaschnikov is presented to an audience on one end of the runway; the band starts at the other end, barely heard or seen. With each song they get closer and closer until they are actually in amongst the crowd. Every song equals one hundred meters of distance covered and in this way each song is a unique experience unto itself, with its own acoustic and relationship to the audience.
THE PERFORMANCE SERIES ʻSYMPHONYʼ ʻSYMPHONYʼ is a performance series in six movements, organized in collaboration with VW (VeneKlasen/Werner), presented in their gallery September 2010 to June 2011. Musicians, composers, and visual artists were invited to make works that expand on the traditional concepts of concert and exhibition, and to present these works as unique events, or 'movements', in the gallery. Exploring new strategies and situations in performance, each movement of ʻSYMPHONYʼ plays with - or against - an idea of conversion: each musician is confronted with a new staging, which does not resemble a typical concert; likewise, each artist risks a step into the musical world, disregarding the notion that artworks exist as purely visual strategies. Movements of SYMPHONY include works by Arto Lindsay, Olaf Nicolai, Annika Eriksson, Bo Christian Larsson, Ari Benjamin
Meyers and Anri Sala. © SOUNDFAIR 2011
THE UTOPIA OF A SOUNDSHOW ʻTELL ME ALL, SHOW ME NOTHINGʼ
CONTACT: Clara Meister clara@soundfair.net www.soundfair.net
INTRODUCTION
SOUNDFAIR - EXHIBITING MUSIC
SOUNDFAIR is an exhibition project based in Berlin that has set as its purpose the re-contextualization of music through the auditive exhibiting of music as unique artworks.
The goal of SOUNDFAIR is to establish a context for composed sound to be understood and consumed as an artwork: to exhibit composed sound as a means of artistic expression mainly without any visual component or implied visual or spatial strategy.
SOUNDFAIR presents these SOUNDOBJECTS in a context divorced from the more common contextualized role of music and sound as mass-produced items of entertainment or design.
SOUNDFAIR takes as a starting point changes in our habits of listening to and perception of music and sound due to its greatly increased availability (chiefly through digital reproduction and the internet). Less and less is music in and of itself the focus of our aural attentions; conversely music is increasingly contextualized and presented as merely one part of a larger medial package, in particular in combination with the visual. Not only are technologies changing and adapting but so is our own perception and consumption of music and sound.
SOUNDFAIR is creating, curating and producing performances, concerts and exhibition projects at irregular intervals.
UNREALIZED PROJECT
SOUNDSHOW ʻTELL ME ALL, SHOW ME NOTHINGʼ Without doubt the disciplines are mingling. In an exhibition context it may be possible to use the exhibition as an open platform to engage for example music and visual art without the dominance of either sight or hearing. This wish or utopia marks the starting point for SOUNDSHOW.
Not only are concerts staged in art related contexts but likewise music is visualized in many forms and various media. Many of these approaches though master only one of the disciplines which then comes as an accompaniment to the other; in exhibitions it is usually the audible that is the loser in this game. In a contemporary paragon the eye is champion over the ear. The idea is to make an exhibition which is visually so reduced that the ear is not thrown into any conflict with a visual counterpart. A work of art can solely be a work of sound. This should not be confused with ʻSound artʼ, where the installation i.e. the physical object is an inherent part of the work.
How do we ʻpictureʼ this empty show?
This idea asks for an exhibition with many spaces which function as compartments separating the individual sound works from each other. Unlike a concert or a CD, we don't separate the works through time, but through space. Sound, different to vision, ignores the digression of the listener. An averting of hearing is impossible and only spatial solutions can border in sound. Each space compartment would be exclusively filled with sound, whereas music and spoken word is also included here as ʻsoundʼ. Each sound work therefore would become a unique SOUNDOBJECT though it would be neither haptically nor visually present. (The aim being to keep even the technical equipment from view.) The individual spaces and the exhibition itself need to be curated as much as any ʻvisualʼ exhibition: the format of sound as the only parameter is not sufficient. Also the architecture needs to be examined closely as this exhibition could but should not as its main focus trigger a new approach to the white cube discussion. It is about filling a space and taking up time. Visual artists, musicians, and composers would be invited to contribute. © SOUNDFAIR 2011
INTRODUCTION OF THE FOUNDERS
CLARA MEISTER came to Berlin for her curatorial studies in 2002 and has worked for numerous international artist studios (among them Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Elmgreen&Dragset) and institutions (Haus der Kunst). Her main focus is curating performances as well as book exhibitions and film programs. Currently a PHD student at the Humboldt University in Berlin, she has published articles for artist catalogues and art magazines and curated exhibitions and discussion programs. She is co-editor of the journal MENT.
ARI BENJAMIN MEYERSʼ work is a form of productive sabotage that plays on an audience's expectations. He is continually developing musical and performative concepts that push the boundaries of current genres, expanding on his education as a conductor and composer. Born 1972 in New York, he studied at The Juilliard School and Yale University before traveling to Berlin as a Fulbright Scholar in 1996. In 2007 he served as music director for Il Tempo del Postino, part of the inaugural Manchester International Festival, where he worked closely with Matthew Barney, Olafur Eliasson, and Tino Sehgal, among others. With Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster he created two staged performances, NY.2022 for the Guggenheim in New York City and K.62/K.85 , which was commissioned by Performa '09. Currently he is collaborating with Anri Sala and Sejla Kameric on the Artangel-commissioned film, 1395 Days Without Red.
After his musical studies in Munich, THOMAS MAYER moved to Berlin in 2003 in order to study arts management in Berlin/Potsdam. Since then he is working for diverse projects between the categories of music, art and film and collaborates with international composers, artists and musicians. His experience in conceiving and producing projects ranges from orchestral Live-projects, to Internet operas, installations and performances. He is now producing the performances for
SOUNDFAIR. REALIZED PORJECTS (selection)
THE PERFORMANCE ʻSOLOʼ In ʻSOLOʼ only one audience member at a time is able to enter a small room and experience a 6-minute live performance by an opera singer. The composition echoes and explores the charged atmosphere provoked by the confined space and one-to-one relationship. After the singer exits, the audience member is invited to stay alone in the room as long as he or she would like before leaving. After a short pause, a new audience member is admitted and the performance begins anew.
ʻSOLOʼ creates a personal and intimate listening situation and transforms a very small space into a very small private concert hall. The space itself and the performance therein additionally take on the character of an installation, since the work can also be (partially) seen and (over-) heard from the outside. We see and hear only the performer – the audience member for whom she is performing is not visible for viewers of the installation. Composition by Ari Benjamin Meyers, photographs by Douglas Gordon.
THE PERFORMANCE ʻFAR FURTHER FANFARAʼ This open air music performance took place on the landing strip of Flughafen Tempelhof in Berlin, which had been closed for many years and only recently reopened as a public space. A concert by Balkan-speed-brass-band Fanfara Kalaschnikov is presented to an audience on one end of the runway; the band starts at the other end, barely heard or seen. With each song they get closer and closer until they are actually in amongst the crowd. Every song equals one hundred meters of distance covered and in this way each song is a unique experience unto itself, with its own acoustic and relationship to the audience.
THE PERFORMANCE SERIES ʻSYMPHONYʼ ʻSYMPHONYʼ is a performance series in six movements, organized in collaboration with VW (VeneKlasen/Werner), presented in their gallery September 2010 to June 2011. Musicians, composers, and visual artists were invited to make works that expand on the traditional concepts of concert and exhibition, and to present these works as unique events, or 'movements', in the gallery. Exploring new strategies and situations in performance, each movement of ʻSYMPHONYʼ plays with - or against - an idea of conversion: each musician is confronted with a new staging, which does not resemble a typical concert; likewise, each artist risks a step into the musical world, disregarding the notion that artworks exist as purely visual strategies. Movements of SYMPHONY include works by Arto Lindsay, Olaf Nicolai, Annika Eriksson, Bo Christian Larsson, Ari Benjamin
Meyers and Anri Sala. © SOUNDFAIR 2011