Works of Music by Visual Artists

SCORES
Saâdane Afif, Christian Marclay,
Ari Benjamin Meyers, Jorinde Voigt

Exhibition & Concerts

Exhibition: October 28 – November 13, 2016
Opening: October 27, 2016, 7 p.m.
Concerts: October 28 & 30, November 13, 2016

Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof
Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin / Rieckhallen
Invalidenstraße 50-51
10557 Berlin

SCORES, the latest in the series Works of Music by Visual Artists, is an exhibition and concert project devoted to the musical score, a subject that gets constantly re-examined in the visual arts as well as in music. Particularly since the 1960s, the score has been appreciated, above and beyond conventional musical notation, as a multivalent medium of recording which may take the form of spontaneously free drawings, individual symbolic systems, or instructions for activities. The subject of the score was frequently of relevance to the artists presented earlier on in the Works of Music by Visual Artists series, too; preliminary explorations of the theme made themselves regularly felt in association with their visual artworks and conceptions.

With projects by Saâdane Afif, Christian Marclay, Ari Benjamin Meyers and Jorinde Voigt, the score now becomes the focus of an exhibition accompanied by concerts. For the selected artists, music forms an integral component of their work. Despite their differing approaches, all are interested in the transformation of one medium into another, a process that is accomplished in close collaboration with the participating musicians. The scores are presented as drawings, objects, lyrics, graphic-photographic-film notations, and as concepts that generate musical events and performances. Almost all of the works presented on a grand scale in the Rieckhallen at the Hamburger Bahnhof are new commissions; they will be performed, piece by piece, in the spaces in which they are exhibited.

The installative works by Saâdane Afif often call to mind production processes in music: he works with scores/concepts, song texts, composition, posters and recording media. In a continuous and potentially unfinished process of transformation, and with the incorporation of authors, musicians and performers, Afif generates a fascinating network of relationships and references. The exhibition presents a work developed by Saâdane Afif together with the composer Augustin Maurs, Vice de forme: Das Kabarett, which is associated with a performance to mark the exhibition’s opening, Vice de forme (First Notes), and a concert on its final day, Vice de forme (In Songs). During the exhibition a Yamaha player piano will play First Notes, recorded at the opening. 

Christian Marclay is known internationally as a virtuoso of ‘sampling’. In his practice, which includes live performances as well as purely visual works, he takes found objects – often carrying a musical connotations – from daily life, the consumer world and mass media, and remixes them in order to generate his art. On view in the exhibition are the artist’s video Screen Play and his slideshow Zoom Zoom, which both serve as musical scores for the invited ensemble and the performers Elliott Sharp and Shelley Hirsch. Also on display is Christian Marclay’s newly produced comic book To Be Continued, which will be musically interpreted by the ensemBle baBel. All of these works are being presented for the first time in Berlin.

The drawings by Jorinde Voigt, conceived primarily in cycles and called notations and scores by the artist herself, form the core of the artist’s multifaceted oeuvre alongside photographic works, actions, objects and (sound) installations. From Song of the Earth, a projected eight-part cycle of drawings on which Voigt is currently working, the first four chapters will be on view in the exhibition. Entitled Radical Relaxation – Stress and Freedom, The Shift, Divine Territory and The Farewell, they will be partly translated into a musical performance by the zeitkratzer ensemble. Audio recordings from the concerts devoted respectively to the works of Marclay and Voigt will afterwards play in their areas of the exhibition.

In his exhibitions and compositions, Ari Benjamin Meyers explores structures that redefine the performative and immaterial side of music and examine the question of whether music can be exhibited in the context of art. For his work Who’s Afraid of Sol La Ti? (Invention I), Ari Benjamin Meyers has developed a series of ‘meta-scores’ inspired by Sol LeWitt’s Instruction Pieces; each day these will be newly translated and performed by the composer Wojtek Blecharz and the flautist Susanne Fröhlich. On the final day of the exhibition, all the interpretations created and rehearsed on site will be performed from memory.

All the artists presented in SCORES have accepted the invitation to develop, for the exhibition, new works of visual art that can be read, each in its own way, as scores for musical activation. These activations are made audible inside the gallery spaces in direct association with the visual artworks that inspired them.  A collaboration was successfully agreed with the contemporary music festival Klangspuren Schwaz and with Kunstraum Innsbruck for the performance of the ongoing pictorial cycle by Jorinde Voigt and for the production of the new graphic score in the form of a comic book by Christian Marclay and its musical translation.

 

CONCERT PROGRAMME

 

SAÂDANE AFIF
Vice de forme: Das Kabarett

Opening event: October 27, 2016, 8 p.m.

Vice de forme: First Notes
with Augustin Maurs (piano)
Free admission

 

CHRISTIAN MARCLAY
Screen Play, Zoom Zoom, To Be Continued
Video, slideshow and comic book as scores

Concert: October 28, 2016, 8 p.m.

Zoom Zoom (2007–2016)
Slideshow as score for vocal performance
with Shelley Hirsch (voice) & Christian Marclay (images)

To Be Continued (2016)
Comic book as score for ensemble
with ensemBle baBel

Screen Play (2005)
Video film collage as score for ensemble
with ensemBle baBel and Elliott Sharp

Antonio Albanese (guitar), Laurent Estoppey (saxophone), Anne Gillot (flute/bass clarinet), Noëlle Reymond (double bass), Luc Müller (drums), guest: Elliott Sharp (electric guitar/clarinet)

In cooperation with Kunstraum Innsbruck (curator Karin Pernegger), Klangspuren Schwaz (curator Matthias Osterwold) and Deutschlandradio Kultur. Supported by Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council.

 

JORINDE VOIGT
Song of the Earth
Chapter 1: Radical Relaxation – Stress and Freedom
Chapter 2: The Shift
Chapter 3: Divine Territory
Chapter 4: The Farewell
Cycle of drawings as score for ensemble

Concert: October 30, 2016, 8 p.m.

Ensemble zeitkratzer
Reinhold Friedl (artistic director, piano)
Frank Gratkowski (clarinet), Hild Sofie Tafjord (french horn), Elena Kakaliagou (french horn), Hilary Jeffery (trombone), Maurice de Martin (percussion), Burkhard Schlothauer (violin), Nora Krahl (cello), Ulrich Phillipp (double bass), Martin Wurmnest (sound), Andreas Harder (light)

In cooperation with Kunstraum Innsbruck and Klangspuren Schwaz.

 

ARI BENJAMIN MEYERS
Who’s Afraid of Sol La Ti?
(Invention I)
Daily activation of meta-scores by Wojtek Blecharz (composer) & Susanne Fröhlich (recorder) in the exhibition and final concert

Final concert: November 13, 2016, 6.30 p.m.

Wojtek Blecharz (composer) & Susanne Fröhlich (recorder)

 

SAÂDANE AFIF
Vice de forme: Das Kabarett

Concert: November 13, 2016, 8 p.m.

Vice de Forme (In Songs)
Anna Clementi (voice) & Clemens Hund-Göschel (piano)
Composer: Augustin Maurs

 

A project by Freunde Guter Musik Berlin e.V.
in cooperation with Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof
Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
Made possible by funding from Hauptstadtkulturfonds and Ernst Schering Foundation.
With support from Electronic Music Studio TU Berlin, Audio Communication Group.

 

Curators:
Ingrid Buschmann / Freunde Guter Musik Berlin e.V.
Gabriele Knapstein / Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin

Press Contact:
Achim Klapp, Tel. ++49-(0)30-2579 7016, presse@freunde-guter-musik-berlin.de

Further Information:
www.musikwerke-bildender-kuenstler.de
www.freunde-guter-musik-berlin.de
www.smb.museum/hbf
www.facebook.com/hamburgerbahnhof

 

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