SCORES

SCORES, the latest in the series Works of Music by Visual Artists, is an exhibition and concert project devoted to the musical score, a subject that gets constantly re-examined in the visual arts as well as in music. Particularly since the 1960s, the score has been appreciated, above and beyond conventional musical notation, as a multivalent medium of recording which may take the form of spontaneously free drawings, individual symbolic systems, or instructions for activities.

With projects by Saâdane Afif, Christian Marclay, Ari Benjamin Meyers and Jorinde Voigt, the score theme now becomes the focus of an exhibition accompanied by concerts. Despite their differing approaches, all the selected artists are interested in the transformation of one medium into another, a process that is accomplished in close collaboration with the participating musicians. The scores are presented as drawings, objects, lyrics, graphic-photographic-film notation, and as concepts that generate musical events and performances. Almost all of the works presented on a grand scale in the Rieckhallen of the Hamburger Bahnhof have been recently created on commission; they will be performed, piece by piece, in the spaces in which they are exhibited.

Vice de forme: Das Kabarett, a work developed by Saâdane Afif together with the composer Augustin Maurs, will be presented in both an opening event Vice de forme (First Notes) and a concert Vice de forme (In Songs) on the last day of the exhibition. A Yamaha player piano will play First Notes, recorded at the opening, during the exhibition.

Christian Marclay’s new comic book To Be Continued will be performed by ensemBle baBel. Also on view by the artist is the video Screen Play and the slideshow Zoom Zoom, which both serve as musical scores for the ensemble as well as performers Shelley Hirsch and Elliott Sharp. All of these works are being presented for the first time in Berlin.

The first four chapters of Song of the Earth, a projected eight-part cycle of drawings currently being created by Jorinde Voigt, will be on view and partly performed by Ensemble zeitkratzer. Audio recordings from the concerts devoted respectively to the works of Marclay and Voigt will afterward play in their areas of the exhibition.

Ari Benjamin Meyers has developed a series of “Meta-Scores,” inspired by Sol LeWitt’s “Instruction Pieces”; each day, they will be newly translated and performed by the composer Wojtek Blecharz and the flautist Susanne Fröhlich. On the exhibition’s last day, all the interpretations created and rehearsed during the exhibition will be performed once more, now by heart.

A project by Freunde Guter Musik Berlin e.V.
in cooperation with Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof
Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
Made possible by funding from Hauptstadtkulturfonds and Ernst Schering Foundation.

Curators:
Ingrid Buschmann / Freunde Guter Musik Berlin e.V.
Gabriele Knapstein / Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin
 

Programme:

October 27
7pm: exhibition opening
8pm: Saâdane Afif
Vice de forme (First Notes)
with Augustin Maurs
Opening event

October 28, 8pm
Christian Marclay
Screen Play, Zoom Zoom, To Be Continued
Performances with
Shelley Hirsch & Christian Marclay
ensemBle baBel & Elliott Sharp
In cooperation with Kunstraum Innsbruck and Klangspuren Schwaz. 
Supported by Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council.

October 30, 8pm
Jorinde Voigt
Song of the Earth
Chapter 1: Radical Relaxation – Stress and Freedom
Chapter 2: The Shift
Concert with Ensemble zeitkratzer
In cooperation with Kunstraum Innsbruck and Klangspuren Schwaz. 

November 13, 6:30pm
Ari Benjamin Meyers
Who’s Afraid of Sol La Ti? (Invention I)
Final concert with Wojtek Blecharz & Susanne Fröhlich

November 13, 8pm
Saâdane Afif
Vice de forme (In Songs)
Concert with Anna Clementi & Martin Grütter
Composer: Augustin Maurs