No Sound Is Innocent – upcoming exhibition at Marabouparken konsthall

NO SOUND IS INNOCENT
30 August–30 November 2014

Erik Bünger, Written on Tablets of Flesh
The Great Learning Orchestra, a4 rum
Angelica Mesiti, Citizens Band

Press preview: Friday 29 August at 10 am
Opening: Friday 29 August at 5–8 pm

Concert with the Great Learning Orchestra at 6.30 pm followed by percussionist Jonny Axelsson’s performance of Erik Bünger’s composition The Empire Never Ended at 7 pm.

For further information and press images, please contact:
Niki Kralli, Information Manager, Marabouparken konsthall, niki.kralli@marabouparken.se

NO SOUND IS INNOCENT

Under the heading No Sound Is Innocent, Marabouparken konsthall presents three parallel exhibitions that in various ways relate to sound and listening, voice and music. The title is borrowed from a graphic score which forms part of the experimental Great Learning Orchestra’s installation a4 rum, a comprehensive and unusual archive of musical instructions, which is exhibited in the gallery. The score No Sound Is Innocent refers to the British improvisational musician Eddie Prévost’s book of the same title, in which he, like the artists participating in Marabouparken’s exhibition, explores the cultural, aesthetic, social and political dimensions of sound. Parallel to a4rum we present Angelica Mesiti’s video work Citizens Band in which four street musicians in exile perform music from their native cultures. Artist and composer Erik Bünger contributes his exhibition Written on Tablets of Flesh, where he traces the voice’s metaphysical relationship to the body – from the Old Testament, via us and into the future.

Erik Bünger: Written on Tablets of Flesh

The exhibition Written on Tablets of Flesh is a trilogy of essayistic works by artist and composer Erik Bünger, accompanied by his live performances and a display of artefacts that recur in the films. Centred on the human voice and employing humour, the exhibition chops and changes between history, philosophy, media and popular culture to explore the contradictory relationship between the voice, the body, music, language and technology. Here the voice and music are not the phenomena that primary give rise to a personal, human presence and interpersonal communication; rather they are a strange being that allows a non-human entity to enter the human body and take control over it.

The films A Lecture on Schizophonia (2009), The Third Man (2010) and The Girl Who Never Was (2013) have emerged from the artist's performative lectures in front of a live audience. These filmic essays constitute a winding discussion beginning in the birth of recording and transmitting technologies, taking in the Old and the New Testaments, to popular culture and media. The third and concluding part of the trilogy, The Girl Who Never Was, sees several thematic threads from A Lecture on Schizophonia and The Third Man converging into a new weave, which takes us back to the beginning, as well as to the end, of humanity’s spoken and written history in which Erik Bünger traces history’s repressed female voice: from Eve in the Garden of Eden, via the girl’s voice believed to be the first recorded voice in history, to the final scenes of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The Great Learning Orchestra: a4 rum

Far from all of the compositions that the Great Learning Orchestra works with require musicians who can read music. a4 rum is a project that stretches the boundaries of visual art and music, initiated in 2004 by Leif Jordansson for the Great Learning Orchestra. What began as an open invitation to contribute a composition, which could be in the format of traditional musical notation, written instructions, graphic images or photographs, has now grown into a comprehensive archive of more than 140 compositions that each fits on an A4 sheet. These compositions are not based on conventional notation or conventional musical thinking. Instead, they become the point for departure for discussions and close readings by the members of the group. The working process involves exploring the material and, above all, learning to listen. Thus, the exhibition a4 rum is a combination of an installation and a concert in which hundreds of compositions can be both viewed and heard. The presentation of a4 rum at Marabouparken konsthall is the most comprehensive presentation to date and comprises a large number of new compositions by well-known artists, musicians, etc.

During the period September–November, the Great Learning Orchestra will perform several of the exhibited compositions in Marabouparken konsthall; see our website for dates, www.marabouparken.se.

Angelica Mesiti: Citizens Band

The exhibition Citizens Bandcomprises four films that document musicians who work outside the established music scene. The films were shot in ordinary public places, from a public swimming pool and the Metro in Paris to the streets of Australia, where both the music and the context in which it is performed depict a life in exile.

Geraldine Zongo from Cameroon practises water drumming. The technique is called akutuk and is traditionally performed by women in the rivers of Cameroon but is here executed in a public bath in Paris. Asim Goreshi, a taxi driver from Sudan, whistles a plaintive traditional Sudanese folk tune, sitting in his cab in Brisbane. Algerian born Mohammed Lamourie sings Algerian rai, a form of folk music, and plays his Casio keyboard in the Parisian Metro system while Mongolian Bukhchuluun Ganburged plays the Mongolian morin khuur (a horse head fiddle) and throat sings on a Sydney corner.

The participating artists:

Erik Bünger (born 1976 in Växjö, Sweden) lives in Berlin where he works as an artist and composer. His art is centred on the human voice and its contradictory relationship to the body, language, music and technology. In collaboration with Argos Centre for Art and Media in Brussels, Impakt Foundation in Utrecht, HKMV in Dortmund, Galerie M29 in Cologne, the Substation Centre for Art & Culture in Melbourne and Marabouparken konsthall, Erik Bünger’s film trilogy Written on Tablets of Flesh is touring these institutions.

The Great Learning Orchestra is a network of over one hundred trained and untrained musicians of various genres, cities and countries. Based in Stockholm, the orchestra works with composers and musicians from all over the world and has since the start in 2004 performed a great number of compositions originating in the experimental music scene and collaborated with well-known composers such as Gavin Bryars, Terry Riley and Arnold Dreyblatt.

Angelica Mesiti (born 1976 in Sydney, Australia) lives and works in Paris and Sydney. In her video works the artist uses cinematic conventions and performance languages as a means of responding to the particularities of a given location, its history, environment and communities. Past projects have focused on traditional music, dance performance, narrative, the ballad and oral story telling traditions.