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Big Orchestra
Big Orchestra

Big Orchestra

Cat. Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfort

ART

64 Pages, 10 x 10

Formats: Trade Paper

Trade Paper, $34.95 (US $34.95) (CA $46.95)

Publication Date: March 2020

ISBN 9783864422850

Rights: US & CA

Snoeck Publishing Company (Mar 2020)

Price: $34.95
 
 

Overview

Musical instruments in the form of sculptures represent a still relatively unknown, recent development in contemporary art. The ­publication accompanying this international group ex­hibition presents artworks that function as musical instruments. The performance on the sculptural instruments forms the center of this constantly changing exhi­bition. During the course of the show, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt will temporarily turn into a concert hall, where the works are activated and brought to tonal life. Visitors to the exhibition will be able to experience the sound of the artworks in a live setting. Ever-newly ­formed ensembles examine the sound of the instruments, which are subsequently presented in concerts, or the ­artists activate their own works in performances. The starting point for the concept is an extended notion of art and music, as seen during the Fluxus movement of the 1960's: happenings and ­actions were understood as "concerts," since they ­appeared structured like compositions, and combined different media and materials.

Reviews

The way contemporary composers address the question of what an instrument actually is can be seen as an important contribution to the understanding of our current, digitally influenced culture and its options for action. It shows that traditional musical instruments and instrumental playing are by no means obsolete, even in a technically upgraded music culture. Mixtures of media—and they do, by and large, include references to older media situations—are the norm in any media culture. Today's careless use of the term digital revolution tends to cloud the view of our contemporary media reality as articulated in the arts: the coexistence of new and old—of analogue and digital—seems to be overlooked. The Medienvergessenheit, or »data deluge,« of our present times is quite unfortunate insofar as the technical concept of progress, propagated as a natural process, suggests that the way media culture is structured and devised be subject to the progress of technical developments, and that it could not possibly be taken over by humans themselves. Yet that is exactly what is possible, and it actually presents one of the most important challenges of the twenty-first century.

Author Biography

Irene Noy is the author of Emergency Noises: Sound Art and Gender. Noy holds a PhD from The Courtauld Institute of Art, where she also completed the Sackler Research Forum Postdoctoral Fellowship. Marion Saxer is a professor at the Musikhochschule Lübeck for Musicology. Matthias Ulrich is an art historian and curator at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt. He edited the catalogs for Tobias Rehberger and the show Secret Societies, as well as All-Inclusive. A Tourist World.