Listening Art at documenta 12 in Kassel..

A special year for art, so they say.. Venice Biennale, Documenta 12,
Sculpture Projects in Münster.. I'm in Germany right now. The place for art this summer, since two of the three major art events happen to be in Germany. So this Monday i finally found my way to documenta 12 in Kassel on the look out for Art to listen to.. Let me say it right away.. there was not much at all !!!!!!
I was quite pleased though when i found out that a colleague of mine, Imogen Stidworthy actually had a room on her own.. I met Imogen last year a couple of times, when i was on a group show with her in Liverpool.. You should check her out, she does very important work. I love the humanity in her work the most about it.. The piece she was showing that i liked most carried the title "i hate".. it reminded me about the piece she was doing for the show we both were in, which was titled "get here"..Here is an image of me waving to Imogen while i am listening to her piece..
It is a 5.1 Surround Format, with speakers built into this U-Shaped wall.. We can listen to a person (I only remember one, could have been more as well..) trying to articulate the words "i hate". If we stay fixed at one point we quickly get the impression of being immersed into these different attempts and ways of articulating the phrase "I hate".. The sound quality is superior and the spatial quality of the piece areamazing.. I love this work, because to me it investigates into how language constitutes us as human beings.. how it is also a tool of liberation to express our internal emotional state.. and in return then highlights our aural perception as a tool to understand these essentially important messages and various pieces of information. Personally i think Imogen's Work is strongly influenced by her surrounding, which i believe to be the city of Liverpool.. She probably would not agree with me, since the work is totally capable to stand on its own. Still, after living in Liverpool from 2000 until 2005, i have to suppose that Liverpool as a place must have a profound impact on her work..

Then there was an interesting piece by Inigo Manglano-Ovalles called radio..it consists of a room covered in orange light and on the floor is a wooden object shaped after a stereo-type of a radio. There are two speaker that constantly transmit white noise like sound. I find it interesting in the sense, that it uses the medium radio for a very visual installation piece. Also the sound element seems ultra important, since without them the installation could easily fall into insignificance.. It is mainly a visual installation though and as such I do not consider it fully as a piece of listening art..

Having said this actually brings me to an interesting point.. why do i consider Imogen's Piece, (which also has a second part that builds on a video) more a piece of listening art than the piece by Inigo Manglano-Ovalles? I guess it must be our perception and what actually forms the basis of the work.. Inigo Manglano-Ovalles visualizes for me a radio moment.. the image clearly comes first.. whereas in Imogen's work I get the strong sense that her work is based on listening and actually being triggered by what she hers, rather than sees. This for me makes her work for me so much more interesting than Inigo Manglano-Ovalles.

This brings me to the last piece i find worth mentioning on this blog. Black chords plays lyrics by Saâdane Afif. 13 identical black guitars are hooked up to identical amps. All Guitars have a different tuning and are arranged in space. They are equipped with a technical addition that allows for the open tuning to be played mechanically as a chord. The mechanism is computer controlled and seems to be programmed in a random manner. This results in hearing a random series of different guitar chords in space. Visually this piece is very strong and it also is a beautiful idea. I personally would have loved to hear a lot more variety in the amp's set ups, but that is just a personal matter of taste. I love the combination of installation and musical composition although i have to say the space was poorly equipped for this piece. It is a straight forward piece, which is very beautiful and interesting although i am not sure about its depth. I would like to conclude that the metaphor and the language in this piece is also more of a visual
nature rather than a piece based on listening experience.

Apart from these pieces, I only found one more listening related piece, which i really did not like at all. I do not remember the title or the author. I apologize for this, but i think it is better this way. I have to add that out of six main location i only visited four: the Museum Fridericanum, the documenta Halle, the Aue Pavillion and the Neue Gallerie. So there could be a lot that i missed, but i saw enough to draw the conclusion, this artform is far from being understood as a valid contribution to the arts world and still has
a long, long way to go to be fully recognized. Let's do it !!!