Ari Benjamin Meyers: Da Capo (Tacet in Concert)

On the weekend of January 18–19, 2020, the Berlin-based American artist Ari Benjamin Meyers will explore the relationship between music and memory at the Schering Stiftung’s Project Space.

Meyers’ intervention is occasioned by the launch of the artist’s book Tacet in Concert (Corraini Edizioni), recently published in connection with Meyers’ solo exhibitions at the Kunstverein Kassel and at OGR Turin (both in 2019) and produced with support from the Schering Stiftung. A conversation by the artist with the neuropsychologist Daniela Sammler (Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig) will discuss various aspects of Meyers’ work—such as the role of memory and musical memory, the effect of music on the human brain, or music as a form of communication—from both an artistic and neuroscientific perspective. The discussion will be moderated by Christina Landbrecht, Program Director Art, and Katja Naie, Program Director Science and Managing Director of the Schering Stiftung.

The book presentation and discussion will be accompanied by the performance Solo for Ayumi (2017), which will be presented on both days from 12 noon until 6pm. The performance is a new reinterpretation of a work originally conceived with Ayumi Paul, which Meyers, for this occasion, realizes here for the first time in cooperation with the violinist and dancer Manon Parent.

Solo for Ayumi is a series of compositions, choreographies, scores and objects based on letters written at the request of Meyers, wherein Paul described and reflected on key memories from her childhood, youth, and adulthood. Meyers in turn responded with twelve handwritten scores, as answers, which he inscribed by hand on the letters he received from her.

In July and August 2017, Ayumi Paul performed these 12 compositions daily at the Berlin gallery Esther Schipper. The six-hour performance exhibition is a kind of portrait of a musician’s life originally performed by the violinist herself. The letter-scores as well as selected personal objects of Paul’s are presented in custom-made frames and vitrines in a museum-like display setting. As in the exhibition at Esther Schipper, the audience at the Schering Stiftung is invited to come and go as they please, attending part or the whole of the performance.