ton not. not ton.

Artists: Lisa Alvarado, Samuel Beckett, Gavsborg, Channa Horwitz, Anja Kreysing, Musica Mosaica.

Opening with concerts by Gavsborg, Anja Kreysing and Musica Mosaica: May 5, 6pm

Concert, performance, exhibition: ton not. not ton is devoted to the sound of things—sound emerging in the form of acoustic interventions, in objects arranged within the space and in one’s own imagination. It is all about the infusion of visual art with music. This second edition focuses on textures, frequencies, structures, colours, patterns and movement. Likewise, the score or choreography is considered as a formative and visual instrument. ton not. not ton examines the way in which sound articulates motion, spaces, dynamics and, above all, time. As in the musical contributions, rhythm is also inherent in the works of visual art, giving them a performativity of their own.

With Lisa Alvarado, Samuel Beckett, Gavsborg, Channa Horwitz, Anja Kreysing and Musica Mosaica, the second edition of ton not. not ton also compiles contributions by both visual artists and musicians, bringing together those who operate at the boundaries of their respective fields.

Channa Horwitz had worked on a system of drawings since the early 1960s. Derived from the format of American standard graph paper, the artist renders time using graphic entities and motion in time as associated colour schemes, thus designing structures that translate temporal-spatial relationships into drawings. Most of her drawings are based on the numerical sequence one to eight and a colour code assigned to each digit. She arranges the number sequences in ever new variations, developing them into highly complex systems. Her works resemble graphic notations demanding to be deciphered. Since the late 1960s, Horwitz has also used a series of drawings, which she called Sonakinatographies—a compound of the Greek words for “sound”, “motion” and “notation”—as choreographic source material for performances. During the opening of the exhibition, the sound artist and accordionist Anja Kreysing will perform an interpretation of the works; she will use her computerized accordion to play the scores. Lisa Alvarado is a visual artist and musician. While the colours she uses in her paintings recall modernist paintings, the geometric compositions are reminiscent of Mexican textiles. Her works hover between categories. Some of the graphic step-like shapes, prismatic compositions, meandering or zigzag patterns and glyph-like forms seem inspired by Mayan textiles; other painted surfaces recall desert scrub, coral reefs and aerial photographs. Alvarado began producing works conceived as portable sets for the band Natural Information Society in 2010. They allow the audience to be drawn also visually into the dynamics of sonic action. The first of Samuel Beckett’s minimalist television plays, realized for the Süddeutscher Rundfunk, appeared in 1980 under the title Quadrat (Quad). In the piece, the interplay of time and space is demonstrated in the strictest manner. It operates with the serial play of a movement pattern enacted by four actors. Musica Mosaica focuses on composition according to predefined principles and constraints based on a strictly approximative understanding of musical fundamentals such as rhythms, intervals and notes. After years of playing mainly improvised music in various projects (Buffle, Humus, Saule), Brussels-based Xavier García Bardón and Emmanuel Gonay have now transferred their intuitive approach to the field of writing. In a search of flatness and perspective, they formulate rules yet allow themselves to circumvent them. They collect sounds and images from different sources and apply different protocols to create a divergent perspective marked by film editing and geometry. Gavsborg has been producing music with the Equiknoxx Music label for over ten years. The Jamaican ensemble of the same name pairs classic dub and sound-system techniques with broken beats and eclectic samples atypical of the genre; you hear crackling bags or bleating horns, quacking ducks or brazenly squawking birds of prey. His versatility and unconventional musical approach have enabled Gavsborg to collaborate with a variety of artists and labels.

A joint project of Kunsthalle Münster and dispari—a label and platform for auditory publications and performances at changing locations.

Curators: Nguyen Phuong-Dan + Merle Radtke