Sicht- und Hörbares befruchten sich sinnvoll... " – Torsten Möller, «Ein grosser Wurf», Schweizer Musikzeitung, 3 May 2018
quartet – bodies in performance is a video installation that explores the interlocking connections between sound production and performance gestures and binds the act of composition to physical articulation. The audience does not see the performers actually playing the instruments; rather, its attention is directed at the anatomy of the performers’ backs, which are carefully illuminated against an infinite black backdrop. The back muscles, which are animated by the performance gestures, almost seem to dance to the sounds produced. Thus, the music is visualized in the moving body, emphasizing the rhythm, crescendi, and accelerandi and drawing listeners into the essence of the physical strain of years of intense practice on the muscles.
IMPRESSIONS KUNSTRAUM WALCHETURM ZUERICH
June, 8.-23., 2018
During the exhibition, these videos all play independently with different looping times (21', 20', 18', 15'). Four speakers on pedestals, each featuring one of the instrumentalists, are distributed freely within the exhibition space. The audience is invited to promenade among the sculpturesque speaker set-up to create their own individual audio-visual mix.
To best experience this documentation, open all four videos at once and start them at different times.
Listen to quartet being featured at the Swiss Radio SRF 2, Kultur 2, in a wonderful interview by Cécile Olshausen with me on my work on June 15, 2018 during the exhibition of quartet at the Kunstraum Walcheturm, Zürich. The interview is in German.
Excerpts:
10:15 I talk about my installation work in general
14:35 quartet is being introduced
Premiere: 2018, Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik, Witten, Germany
Commissioned by WDR and the City of Witten
Featured in the video: Brian Archinal – percussion
Simone Keller – piano
Moritz Müllenbach – violoncello
Krassimir Sterev – accordion
Carlotta Holy – camera
Markus Brunn – lights
Alice Fischer – audio recording
Damien Inderbitzin – video postproduction
This installation is dedicated to the New York artist Ernesto Klar and dancer Mariangela Lopez, whose collaboration has inspired this work.