The Exhibition “Une musique intérieure” questions our conduct, our language, and our voice as one would the balance of our inner ear; as instruments that stabilise our intimate relationship with the outside world. The exhibition “Une musique intérieure” (Inner Music) is the new framework for the score Solo – Nature Study Notes – 1969-2019 [Athens Version] created and performed in collaboration with Georgia Sagri, Delia Gonzalez and Serapis Maritime in early summer 2021. This score was written in Greece by using freely available improvisation rites (prose instructions) exercising the open resource principle of the 1960s English collective, The Scratch Orchestra. The outline of the exhibition’s floor plan at the Hot Wheels gallery in Athens, where this work was first exhibited, is superimposed onto the Tabakalera space. Moreover, the clothing designed by Serapis Maritime for the performance is printed with images from the Greek gallery and verbal instructions of the rites. Solo – Nature Study Notes – 1969-2019 [Athens Version] 2021 seeks to interrogate the relationship between the individual and the collective. The score aims to gather the activation of different rites through the clothing worn by one person (a solo performer) who animates the instructions, thereby shifting the construction of the social body onto the somatic formation of the individual. On the other hand, the audience (a collective) is then placed in free circulation around this activation so that the group is more affected in its active listening or passive behaviour. The exhibition at Tabakalera calls on the scores of composers who were pioneers in their attention to contexts, such as Alvin Lucier (Chambers, 1968), Pauline Oliveros (Deep Listening, 1989), and Milan Adamčiak (Floor scores, 1967). As Erik Satie already emphasised in his Musiques d’ameublement (Carrelage phonique, 1917), interiority is colonised by social rules. It is the political level of determinism and the instrumental character—in the double sense of musical instrument and tool of manipulation— that artists, such as local artist Amable Arias or a new generation of artists such as Eva Barto, Mattin, Matthieu Saladin, and Cally Spooner, specify in this exhibition which is offered to the public as a chamber music concert.
— Pierre Bal-Blanc
Curated by Pierre Bal-Blanc, in conversation with Oier Etxeberria.
Participating artists: Milan Adamčiak, Amable Arias, Eva Barto, Delia Gonzalez, Daniel Grúň, Alvin Lucier, Mattin, Pauline Oliveros, Georgia Sagri, Matthieu Saladin, Erik Satie, Scratch Orchestra, Serapis Maritime, Cally Spooner and Vier5.
At Tabakalera, Donostia / San Sebastián
until April 24, 2022
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