[spectre] Fwd: exh. Sound Art. Sound as a Medium of Art, ZKM

[Andreas Broeckmann]

ZKM | Media Museum
March 17th, 2012–January 06th, 2013
Private view/Eröffnung: March 16, 2012

The exhibition "Sound Art. Sound as a Medium of Art" presents for the 
first time the development of sound art in the 21th century at the ZKM | 
Media Museum and in a public space. From Futurism to Fluxus, through to 
Twitter sonifications, the ZKM charts the history of Sound Art during 
the 20th century. However, focus is placed on contemporary practices: 
with works from 90 artists from which approximately 30 new productions 
from recent years will be represented, the visitor gains insights into 
the unique sound cosmos of contemporary art. The sound world visualizes 
its own exhibition architecture, and the exhibition visitor himself 
becomes the generator of sounds.

Visual experience dominates in numerous exhibitions. "Sound Art. Sound 
as a Medium of Art" emphasizes auditory experience and transforms the 
visual experience. The visitor is thus provided with the opportunity to 
become acquainted with an entirely new sound cosmos, which neither 
radio, film nor the music industry has been able to establish to such an 
extent.

The Futurist painter and composer Luigi Russolo published the musical 
manifesto "L'arte dei rumori" in 1913 elevating urban noises to the 
level of an art. In the 1950s and 1960s representatives of musique 
concrète and the artists of the Happening and Fluxus movement (from Yoko 
Ono through to La Monte Young) extended the performative aspect of 
music; hence, in place of composition there could be randomness, in 
place of music, silence, in place of an orchestra, the sea and in place 
of the musician, a horse. In the 1970s and 1980s Industrial Noise 
influenced even pop music, as well as punk music.

At the same time, loudspeakers became the building blocks of monumental 
sculptures, light and sound were compressed into mobile immaterial 
environments, inaudible realities were rendered audible in a synthesis 
of arts and hearing was gauged again by means of psychoanalytical 
experiments. Sonifications of information and medial communication, 
sound environments as well as telematic or medial constellations exert 
an influence on the present-day multiplicity of creative output. In this 
connection, those political questions in sound art that lead to critical 
examination of sound and listening, occupy a central place.

The exhibition "Sound Art. Sound as a Medium of Art" makes new sound 
perceptions not only experienceable in the museum: passers-by may 
encounter sounds in the three installations located in the forecourt of 
the ZKM and five installations in public areas around the city of 
Karlsruhe. In addition, a selected concert program with outstanding 
performative projects enriches the exhibition: LaMonte Young, Xenakis, 
Cage and Ryoji Ikeda are representative of the program’s broad spectrum. 
The exhibition’s wealth of sounds has also been facilitated by the 
richness of the archives made accessible to the Karlsruhe public for the 
first time to this extent. Included are the "unheard avant-garde" from 
Scandinavia, the Broken Music Archiv from Berlin and curated audiopoints 
from european archive inventories.

Including works by John Cage, La Monte Young, Iannis Xenakis, Joseph 
Beuys, Chris Cunningham, Alison Knowles, Paul DeMarinis, Max Neuhaus 
Carsten Nicolai, Gary Hill, Georg Klein, Ryoji Ikeda, Christina Kubisch, 
Cory Arcangel, Mongrel, Gordon Monohan, Cornelia Sollfrank and more.

Curated by Peter Weibel and Julia Gerlach.

Curator: Peter Weibel.
Project coordinator and co-curator: Julia Gerlach.


Project website: http://on1.zkm.de/zkm/stories/storyReader$7919
Press release available at: http://on1.zkm.de/zkm/e/presse/

An exhibition in the course of the 21th European Culture Days Karlsruhe.