The Voice and the Lens The Voice and the Lens is a meditation on two facing technologies that have become fundamentally important in making and understanding contemporary culture. The voice can be seen as the technology of the human but is also informed by and reflects other less organic technologies. We talk about the voice in terms of its ‘colour’ (coloratura: to colour) and its focus; the techniques and rhetorics that we apply to light are mimicked by the movement of the mouth’s own aperture. Furthermore, it seems increasingly important to look at the voice rather than just to hear it. With programmes such as the BBC’s The Voice we have become obsessed with scrutinising the voice. The arena for this entertainment is — crucially— live television where the analysis is as much optical as it is aural. To appear to us as natural, the production of the voice — just as the presence of the camera — should be invisible, though, importantly, this is a high-wire act and slips and cracks are revealed at every step. The relationship between the voice and the camera is a filter through which we explore a number of linked ideas, in particular: sound and image; original and copy; liveness and mediation; presence and absence. And it ultimately stages the relationship between different ways of experiencing and constructing our selves. We invited vocalists and artist film-makers to negotiate a process of collaboration resulting in works for screen and for performance, begging the question of which might be considered 2 / 3
the original and which the copy. In notated music, the score is regarded as the ‘work’ and any performance of it is merely an ‘interpretation’. In the visual art world the final object or event is given principal value and the processes involved in making it are given a secondary status. We aim to upset these hierarchies. From nineteenth century experiments with moving images, to early films, video, MTV, digital film, IMAX and mobile phones, the voice has played a central role in our relationship to technology. The Voice and the Lens explores how these technologies have shaped the voice, and how the voice has shaped these technologies. We hope that you enjoy the programme, and encourage you to contribute to the many debates that orbit The Voice and the Lens and post videos to our Vimeo channel: www.vimeo.com/ channels/thevoiceandthelens. Sam Belinfante and Ed McKeon
Friday 13 June Whitechapel Gallery 12.30 pm – 5.45 pm
4 / 5
Micheal Snow, Still from Rameau’s Nephew by Diderot (Thanxs to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen, 1974
Michael Snow RAMEAU’S NEPHEW BY DIDEROT (THANXS TO DENNIS YOUNG) BY WILMA SCHOEN, 1974
Described (rather cheekily) by director Michael Snow as a musical comedy, this deft probing of sound/image relationships is one of his wittiest, most entertaining and philosophically stimulating films. In his words, the film ‘derives its form and the nature of its possible effects from its being built from the inside, as it were, with the actual units of such a film, i.e. the frame and the recorded syllable. Thus its ‘dramatic’ element derives not only from a representation of what may involve us generally in life but from considerations of the nature of recorded speech in relation to moving light-images of people.’ Snow’s first ‘talking picture’, the film is divided into approximately twenty sections tied together by thematic rather than narrative concerns. Aside from its
most prominent theme — the relationship of the film’s sounds to its images — its concern with memory and the different uses of the word/sound ‘for/four/fore’ is explored. Indeed, the meanings of words and their sounds are played with at length; the film is awash with various puns, quotes and wordplay, which is hinted at in the title (Wilma Schoen is an anagram of Michael Snow) as well as in the cast credits (many of the several dozen names listed — such as Nice Slow Ham, Seminal Chow, Show Me A Ling and Lemon Coca Wish — are anagrams for Michael Snow). FILM
12.30 – 2.45pm, break, 3.45 – 5.45 pm
Micheal Snow, Still from Rameau’s Nephew by Diderot (Thanxs to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen, 1974
Saturday 14 June Spitalfields Music Summer Festival Rich Mix, Venues 1 & 2 7 pm – 10.30 pm
8 / 9
Laura Cooper, Birds, 2012
Venue 1
7.00pm
Jayne Parker with Loré Lixenberg BIRD, 2012 This film builds on a concept and original performance piece by Lixenberg, and Parker’s earlier film of Katharina Wolpe performing Messiaen’s bird-inspired piano music. Filmed at Steinway Hall, London, Lixenberg’s birdsong is reflected in the bird-wing shape of piano lids and the instrument’s golden-strung interior. The addition of reflection and the dark casket-like casing of the instrument sets the scene for Lixenberg’s interest in the bird as a carrier of the soul at death, inspired by the Egyptian Book of the Dead. LIVE PERFORMANCE
Laura Cooper BIRDS, 2012 BIRDS involves a group of young men using a whistled and phone text code to navigate the financial district of Canary Wharf whilst avoiding being seen by the numerous CCTV cameras that watch over the area. FILM
Elaine Mitchener, David Toop & Barry Lewis, Of Leonardo Da Vinci, 2011
Samuel Beckett NOT I, 1972 Not I features a spot-lit mouth in an otherwise dark space, focusing on an actress’s mouth. The mouth utters at a ferocious pace a logorrhoea of fragmented, jumbled sentences which obliquely tells the story of a woman who appears to have suffered an unspecified traumatic experience. This performance, featuring Julianne Moore and directed by Neil Jordan, was made for the Beckett on Film project. FILM
Ed Atkins DELIVERY TO THE FOLLOWING RECIPIENT FAILED PERMANENTLY, 2011 ‘With its green clouds of fag smoke, this piece is visually restrained compared with Atkins’ usual experiential overload. There is, though, an astonishing monologue, designed to invoke a material sense of the word ‘smoke’ like a haemorrhage in your brain.’ Sam Thorne. FILM
8.00pm
Elaine Mitchener, David Toop & Barry Lewis OF LEONARDO DA VINCI (PART 2), 2011 Elaine Mitchener performs the second part from Of Leonardo da Vinci, a collaborative work with composer and writer David Toop and film-maker Barry Lewis. Absorbed in the visions, memories, prophesies and observations recorded in Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks, a woman dwells on the writing of a life. As oracle, scholar, acolyte, medium and innocent, she voices the spirit of Leonardo, reflecting the nature of life as it moves closer to its end, its teeming presence, the meaning we divine from marks and signs, the flight of the voice, living and dying. The performance will be followed by a discussion by the artists. PERFORMANCE & TALK
10 / 11
Amy Cunningham, Oracle, 2012
Elizabeth Price CHOIR (PARTS 1 & 2), 2011
FILM
9.00pm
Lina Lapelye CANDY SHOP, 2012 – In a series of performances called Candy Shop, Lina Lapelyte revisits well-known hip hop songs, using her voice to question gender, beauty and the mundane. LIVE PERFORMANCE
Sonia Boyce FOR YOU, ONLY YOU, 2007 Filmed and edited by David Bickerstaff This film by David Bickerstaff records a project by artist Sonia Boyce, bringing together artist and performer Mikhail Karikis with vocal consort Alamire in an encounter with Josquin Deprez’s motet Tu solus qui facis mirabilia (You alone can do wonders). FILM
Amy Cunningham ORACLE, 2012 Through the use of re-imagined visual and written archive material together with original close harmony vocal music, Oracle takes the form of a ‘video song cycle’ and responds to the beliefs and statements of the 19th century pioneering mathematician Ada Lovelace who is considered to have designed the first computer programme. The use of ‘offscreen’ disembodied singing voices (from which extracts are used as libretto and text) are designed to echo Lovelace’s own critical voice as observed in her translation notes of the ‘analytical engine’ and in her letters to mathematician Charles Babbage. LIVE PERFORMANCE
Sonia Boyce, For You, Only You, 2007
The video is divided into two distinct parts, of which the first is dedicated to assembling the choir setting with photographs, virtual renderings and encyclopaedic annotations. A satire of the institution hovers in the air — until it explodes with the spectral return of the chorus held in store by chapter two.
Loré Lixenberg, Adipose, 2014
Loré Lixenberg with singers from Trinity Laban ADIPOSE, 2014
ENO, Werner Herzog, Sam Taylor-Johnson, Dougal Wilson SKY ARTS SHORTS Sky Arts and English National Opera present arias directed by Werner Herzog (from Puccini’s La bohème) and Dougal Wilson and Sam Taylor-Johnson (from The Barber of Seville). LIVE PERFORMANCE
The opera singer Adiposa is granted her wish: to be able to eat as much as she wants and to lose weight. In her mind the roles of her dreams await her if only she could lose those kilos and transform into a slender, twerking vision of loveliness. The transformation goes too far, she can’t switch the wish off, she vanishes. Nowhere is the female form and voice more objectified than in the world of opera. Witness the humiliation of Deborah Voigt, one of the greatest voices of our time being sacked from ROH because she couldn’t fit the frock for Ariadne auf Naxos but witness also the whispers of ‘her voice isn’t as good as when she was big’ when she shed those reviled kilos. Projected onto a living screen of throbbing moaning flesh, Adipose is an unpacking, or lens onto the worlds of performing and fat. It’s a comedy. LIVE PERFORMANCE
12 / 13
Venue 2 All evening
Luke and Milo Dean GLASSES, 2014 There was a young man who said, ‘Why can’t I look in my ear with my eye? I think that I might if I stretch very tight – You never can tell till you try!’ Anon
Christian Bök SUCKING ON WORDS A VJ playlist, put together by the Canadian poet, will provide sights and sounds between performances and alongside the drinks.
Freya Birren M.B.C.B.F.T.W. (REDUX, AT REST), 2012
7.15pm
Jennifer Walshe I STILL LOVE YOU NEW YORK, 2012 In I STILL LOVE YOU NEW YORK Walshe works with found material from the Prelinger Archives. Walshe watched hundreds of public domain works from the 1940s to the 1960s, scanning each for details, similarities, creating taxonomies of rhythm, form, tone and resonance. FILM
Russian artist Olia Lialina’s browserbased artwork My Boyfriend Came Back From The War (1996) is considered one of the first works of internet art, and tells the fragmented story of a woman and her boyfriend’s attempts to communicate and connect after he returns from fighting in a war. Lialina’s work has been subject to many re-workings by different artists. Birren’s version takes Lialina’s as a starting point, however, a different story of a different soldier in a different war unfolds from the opening line. Unlike Lialina’s pioneering use of the internet, Birren’s use of technology is deliberately low-fi – the film is silent; Postit notes simulate the frames of a browser, with the film processed to look like it was made in the ‘70s. FILM
Terry Smith and Linda Hirst, Unsung, 2012
Sophie Clements and Scanner SOUL IN REVERSE, 2008
UNSUNG is a work for voice, recorded sound and video made in residence at Dartington, inspired by the collaborative work of Robert Rauschenberg and Merce Cunningham. LIVE PERFORMANCE
Laurie Anderson HIDDEN INSIDE MOUNTAINS, 2006 Hidden Inside Mountains is a film of short stories about nature, artifice and dreams. Located in a fictitious world of theatrical spaces, the stories unfold through music, gesture, text passages and the poetry of variously juxtaposed, evocative visual images. Both joy and loss are expressed in the film’s dreamlike texts, written by Laurie Anderson and shown in both Japanese and English. The film’s haunting music features violins, bells, dog barks and melody as well as vocals by singer/ performer Antony. FILM
FILM
8.15pm
Shirin Neshat TURBULENT, 1998 In Turbulent, two singers (Shoja Azari and Sussan Deyhim) create a powerful musical metaphor for the complexity of gender roles and cultural power within the framework of ancient Persian music and poetry. FILM
Shirin Neshat, Turbulent, 1998
Terry Smith with Linda Hirst UNSUNG, 2012
Soul in Reverse is a film work made in collaboration with Scanner. The work was first exhibited at MU gallery in Eindhoven, as part of the Popshop: Remixing Icons of Mass Culture exhibition.
14 / 15
TEEN AND KEEN Teen and Keen is a selection of films by artists that explore and reflect the culture and identity of late teenage-hood. The artists use Youtube, social media and music video devices to convey the coming of age, finding of self image and voice, independence and sexual awakenings, the aching desperation for cool, the excitement of the new, depression and our constant striving to reinvent the teen wheel. Jennifer Reeder A MILLION MILES AWAY, David Blandy & Larry Achiampong BITER, Leo Gabin WITH ME and GIRLS ROOM DANCE, Jessica Ann Peavy JIVE TURKEY, Rashaad Newsome SHADE COMPOSITIONS, Tameka Norris BACK TO BLACK & TOO GOOD FOR YOU. Selected by David Gryn, Artprojx Cinema www.artprojx.com FILM
9.30pm
Maya Verlaak NEW WORK, 2014 ‘All musical instruments are of less value than the human voice, wherefore we attempt to learn from the latter and imitate it.’ Sylvestro Ganassi Dal Fontegoit, Opera intitulata Fontegara (Venice, 1535) LIVE PERFORMANCE
Jean-Luc Godard ARMIDE (from Lully) from Don Boyd’s Aria, 1987 Invited by the Director and Producer Don Boyd to make a film of an opera aria for the Palme d’Or nominated Aria (1987), Jean-Luc Godard selected Armide from Lully’s opera. Set in a body-building gym, there is an air of menace as the women are torn between vengeance and love. FILM
Rashaad Newsome, Shade Compositions, 2009
ARTPROJX, 8.30pm
Friday 13 June
Saturday 14 June
Whitechapel Gallery
Rich Mix
£ 12.50 / £ 10
7.00 – 10.30pm, £ 15 / £ 5
12.00pm Introduction by the curators
Venue 1
Venue 2
7.00pm Introduction by the curators
7.15pm Jennifer Walshe I Still Love You New York
12.00pm – 5.45pm Michael Snow Rameau’s Nephew by Diderot (Thanks to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen, 1974 12.30 – 2.45pm, break, 3.45 – 5.45pm
Jayne Parker & Loré Lixenberg Bird, 2012 P F
F
Freya Birren M.B.C.B.F.T.W. (Redux, At Rest)
Laura Cooper Birds, 2012 F
Terry Smith & Linda Hirst Unsung, 2012 P
Samuel Beckett Not I, 1972 F
Laurie Anderson Hidden Inside Mountains, 2006
Ed Atkins Delivery to the following Recipient Failed Permanently, 2011 F
Sophie Clements and Scanner Soul in Reverse, 2008 F Shirin Neshat Turbulent, 1998
8.00pm Elaine Mitchener, David Toop, Barry Lewis Of Leonardo da Vinci, 2011 (Part 2) P T Elizabeth Price Choir (Parts 1 & 2), 2011 9.00pm Lina Lapelye Candy Shop, 2012–
F
P
Sonia Boyce For You, Only You, 2007 Amy Cunningham Oracle, 2012 P ENO, Werner Herzog, Sam Taylor-Johnson and Dougal Wilson Sky Arts shorts F 10.00pm Loré Lixenberg Adipose, 2014 P
F
F
F
F
8.30pm Artprojx Cinema presents: TEEN AND KEEN F Jennifer Reeder A Million Miles Away, David Blandy & Larry Achiampong Biter, Leo Gabin With Me and Girls Room Dance, Jessica Ann Peavy Jive Turkey, Rashaad Newsome Shade Compositions, Tameka Norris Back to Black & Too Good For You 9.30pm Maya Verlaak New Work, 2014
P
Jean-Luc Godard Armide (from Lully), from Don Boyd’s Aria, 1987
F
All evening Luke and Milo Dean Glasses, 2014, Installation Christian Bök, Sucking on Words, VJ playlist
Sunday 15 June Whitechapel Gallery 12.30 – 5.30pm, £ 12.50 / £ 10
12.00pm Introduction by the curators Sam Taylor-Johnson Mute, 2001 F
4.00pm Bill Viola Anthem, 1983
Extract from David Lynch Mulholland Drive, 2001 F Bruce McLean & Adam de la Cour Drumstick, 2012
F
F
Dante Rendle Traynor Travel, song, singing, screen, voice, silly: a new work? 2014
P
Sepideh Saii Behind The Scene, 2010
Laure Prouvost It, Heat, Hit, 2010
F
Neil Luck & Fiona Bevan Gaze, 2012 P –– BREAK ––– Elsewhere in the galleries artist Simon Lewandowski demonstrates and performs with his automatic voice machines
P
Helen Petts, with Phil Minton and Ute Wassermann The Cutty Wren, 2009; Ute on the marshes, 2010 Robert Ashley Atalanta Strategy, 1984
F
5.00pm Mikhail Karikis with Adam de la Cour 102 Years Out of Sync, 2013
P
2.00pm Imogen Stidworthy In conversation... T Adam de la Cour performing: Mauricio Kagel Con Voce, 1972 P Anri Sala Answer Me, 2008
F
3.00pm AMAE and De Pinto with Jean Luc Nancy 58(+1) Indices on the body, 2014 P Sam Belinfante Focus, 2012 F Lina Lapelye Dearest! 2014
P
F
Film
P
Live Performance
T
Talk
Jennifer Reader, Stills from A Million Miles Away; Artprojx Cinema 18 / 19
Sunday 15 June Whitechapel Gallery 12 pm – 5.30 pm
20 / 21
Bruce McLean, Drumstick, 2012, work in progress
12.15pm
Sam Taylor -Johnson MUTE, 2001 Mute presents a video of a young man singing a passage from an opera with the sound removed, denying immediate gratification. Yet it is through our inability to hear the imagined beauty of the voice that seems to pass through and animate the singer — precisely, through its failure to reach us — that the film’s extraordinary pathos is discharged. FILM
Extract from David Lynch MULHOLLAND DRIVE, 2001 Along Mulholland Drive nothing is what it seems. In the unreal universe of Los Angeles, the city bares its schizophrenic nature, an uneasy blend of innocence and corruption, love and loneliness, beauty and depravity. A woman is left with amnesia
following a car accident. An aspiring young actress finds her staying in her aunt’s home. The puzzle begins to unfold, propelling us through a mysterious labyrinth of sensual experiences until we arrive at the intersection of dreams and nightmares. FILM
Bruce McLean with Adam de la Cour DRUMSTICK, 2012 Drumstick attempts to deal with problems of communication, visually and aurally. It references Bunraku Theatre, ventriloquism the concepts of throwing your voice, a Newsnight setting, words put into other people’s mouths, Chinese whispers, synchronisation and the work being (of course) completely out of sync. LIVE PERFORMANCE
This film features footage from La Vie en Rose, the Hollywood portrait of Edith Piaf. A young woman is seen intently watching and listening to ‘Piaf’ being called from her dressing room to perform on stage. When ‘Piaf’ finally exits her dressing room, so does our heroine, masking Piaf both visually and in audio by singing her own estranged tune. FILM
Neil Luck & Fiona Bevan GAZE, 2012 Neil Luck & Fiona Bevan present a new collaborative work incorporating Luck’s trademark post-symbolist foley and Bevan’s penetrating feminist subtexts. Their interrogation of recorded media takes the form of juxtaposed scenes drawing influences from Grand Opera to Soap Opera. LIVE PERFORMANCE
–– BREAK –––
Elsewhere in the galleries artist SIMON LEWANDOWSKI demonstrates and performs with his automatic voice machines. 2.00pm
Imogen Stidworthy IN CONVERSATION Artist Imogen Stidworthy will talk about the presence of voice within her practice alongside a series of excerpts from recent projects. One such body of work is based on the production of the ‘castrato’ voice in the film Farinelli (1994). In 2012 Stidworthy worked with a treble, a female soprano and a counter tenor; the three vocal types used to simulate the castrato voice through the seamless technical procedure of digital merging pioneered by the experimental sound laboratory IRCAM, in Paris, for the film. The talk will be followed by an opportunity for questions from the audience. TALK
Neil Luck & Fiona Bevan, Gaze, 2012
Sepideh Saii BEHIND THE SCENE, 2010
22 / 23
Imogen Stidworthy, Falsetto, work in progress
Performed by Adam de la Cour and guests: Mauricio Kagel CON VOCE, 1972 In Con voce three ‘instrumentalists’ are strangely silenced, able only to mimic their parts while humming or whistling. The piece was written after the Soviet invasion of Prague and was dedicated to Kagel’s Czechoslovakian friends. LIVE PERFORMANCE
Anri Sala ANSWER ME, 2008 Filmed in the abandoned dome of a Buckminster Fuller-designed surveillance station, the dome’s distinctive echo, triggered in the film by a man playing the drums in the large, empty space, drowns out all of the dialogue spoken by the female character, with the exception of the words that give the film its title. FILM
AMAE and De Pinto with Jean-Luc Nancy, 58(+1) INDICES ON THE BODY, A Living Archive, 2014 In 2012 the artistic collective AMAE and the artist Pier Giorgio De Pinto started a conversation inspired by the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy’s treatise 58 indices sur le corps, and extended his text into a series of performances exploring the contemporary body and involving the audience in close contact as a way of provoking a deep critical conflict. For this piece, Nancy decided to participate and, stimulated by the artists, added new words to his ‘Indices’ that take his thoughts towards an unexpected ‘queer’ direction. A living archive is something more than a simple performance. It’s a project that closes the circle between the philosopher himself and ‘the body’ he writes about. LIVE PERFORMANCE
Sam Belinfante, Focus, 2012
Lina Lapelyte performance of Yes.Really, CueB gallery, London 2014; Photo: Luca Nascuti
Lina Lapelye DEAREST! 2014
Sam Belinfante FOCUS, 2012 For Focus Sam Belinfante worked with the phenomenal vocalist Elaine Mitchener. Their collaboration grew out of a shared interest in ‘exercise’ as both a device to practise and test techniques and a repetitive activity that requires great physical effort. As an artist new to analogue film, Belinfante explored the limits and idiosyncrasies of his camera in a series of choreographed moves paced by each wind of the machine. Paralleling these movements, Mitchener engages in an intensive workout routine that has dramatic effects on her own (vocal) instruments. FILM
A work that involves female bodies and male voices; castrato arias and instrumental drones; Italian texts and English translations; clear beginnings and curly ends. LIVE PERFORMANCE
Laure Prouvost IT, HEAT, HIT, 2010 It, Heat, Hit is a staccato composition of fragmentary images, abrupt inter-titles and an urgent, whispered voice-over. Organized according to an oblique and shifting logic, the piece weaves a loose narrative of desire and past trauma while pushing the limits of comprehension and coherence. The video is partly a narrative and partly a free, self-referential play with cinematic form and structure. FILM
26 / 27
Dante Rendle Traynor TRAVEL, SONG, SINGING, SCREEN, VOICE, SILLY: A NEW WORK? 2014 Dante Rendle Traynor is an artist who works with video, performance, music and sometimes objects that do some of these things. He is interested in dreams, entertainment and how things become and stop being absurd.
Bill Viola ANTHEM, 1983 Anthem is a post-industrial lamentation, structured on the single piercing scream of a young girl as she stands in the vast chamber of Union Station in Los Angeles. Viola relates this structure to the form and function of religious chants, particularly Gregorian chants (using a harmonic scale in a resonant hall) and Tantric Buddhist chants (ritual exorcism and conversation with demons). FILM
LIVE PERFORMANCE
Helen Petts, with Phil Minton and Ute Wassermann THE CUTTY WREN, 2009 UTE ON THE MARSHES, 2010 Singer Phil Minton performs his version of The Cutty Wren, a traditional song from the Peasants’ Revolt (1381). In Ute on the Marshes, Helen Petts captures German voice artist Ute Wassermann exploring the acoustics under Walthamstow Marshes railway bridge. FILM
Dante Rendle Traynor, Ikon gallery, 2012, Photo: Amy Cunningham
4.00pm
Mikhail Karikis, 102 Years out of Sync, 2013
Robert Ashley ATALANTA STRATEGY, 1984 Created by Robert Ashley and Lawrence Brickman as a multi-projector programme for stage and broadcast media, Atalanta Strategy is based on the anecdote material of the second episode (‘Willard’) of Ashley’s opera, Atalanta (Acts of God). The main anecdote, Willard’s story (sung by Ashley) is surrounded by three kinds of scenes including: aliens discussing the strange habits of human beings; stories about the mountain people of Tennessee; and a mythic interview with Ashley himself on the story’s origins. Featuring: Ronald Vance, Jeffrey M. Jones, Ron Vawter, Kate Valk and The Wooster Group, ‘Blue’ Gene Tyranny, Jacqueline Humbert, Robert Ashley, Rebecca Armstrong, Marjorie Merrick. FILM
Mikhail Karikis with Adam de la Cour 102 YEARS OUT OF SYNC, 2013 Made in 1911, L’Inferno was Italy’s first feature film – a striking visual feast depicting hell as imagined by Dante’s Divine Comedy. Like the epic poem that inspired it, this silent film was based on an actual place – the Tuscan village of Larderello. Visualisations of its geothermal landscape have inspired countless representations of hell, but the actual site has remained mute. For a new performance (featuring Adam de la Cour) Karikis has recorded Larderello’s explosive geothermal sounds and rumbling industrial sonorities. Combining newly filmed footage and fragments of L’Inferno with narration and environmental sound recordings, the work will mine the strata of legend, industrial archaeology, subterranean resonance and the aural imaginary of hell. FILM
28 / 29
ALSO HAPPENING
MURAL
Sam Belinfante & James Weeks Part of Spitalfields Music Summer Festival Installation: 5 – 10 June Live performance with EXAUDI: Sunday 8 June, 3pm & 5pm Mural is a multimedia investigation of the places we occupy in the world: both our domestic and intimate surroundings as well as the vast untamed spaces that extend beyond our immediate walls. The wall becomes the central image of the work — mapping, dividing or encircling a terrain — and its constituent bricks; individual pieces amassing to create a larger enclosing structure. On entering Mural the audience is confronted with a fragmented video wall portraying ideas of boundary, interiority and exteriority, alongside the sounds of eight singing voices, surrounding the audience in sound and image. The music articulates a range of quotations ranging from essays of John Cage and poetry of Fernando Pessoa to critiques of the art of Vermeer. Venue: Limehouse Wharf, Vyner Street, London, E2 9DJ Installation: FREE, no booking required Live performance: Tickets: £ 15 unreserved www.spitalfieldsmusic.org.uk
FILMING CLASSICAL MUSIC With Jonathan Haswell, Barrie Gavin and Miguel Mera Friday 13 June, 10am – 5pm The training day will examine the pre paration process for filming a classical music performance and making a music documentary: marking up a score, planning an interview, choosing camera angles, directing a team, producing work for live transmission, and off-line editing. An essential day for any musicologist, performer or composer interested in researching films of music. Venue: Lecture Theatre, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, 17 Russell Square, London FREE, no booking required
Thanks
Sam Belinfante
It would not have been possible to put this ambitious programme together without the good will and active support of all the artists and their gallery representatives.
Sam has performed and exhibited widely, including group shows in: Stoltzestrasse 11 (Frankfurt); REMAP (Athens); BALTIC (Gateshead); Ikon (Birmingham); and Tate Britain (London), and live events at Milton Keynes Gallery, ICA, and Wysing Arts Centre (Cambridge). His curatorial projects act as an extension of his studio practice and combine performance, choreography and collaboration. Other projects have included Notations and The Voice and Nothing More in collaboration with Neil Luck (Slade, London), LOOPs (Chelsea Space, London) and The Scuttler, with boyleANDshaw (ICA, London).
We’d like to thank the following galleries and distributors for permission to screen works: Cinédoc (Michael Snow); Tyrone Productions (Beckett on Film); Gladstone Gallery (Shirin Neshat); MOT International (Elizabeth Price; Laure Prouvost); Marlborough Chelsea (Rashaad Newsome); Sky Arts and ENO; Hauser & Wirth (Anri Sala); White Cube (Sam Taylor-Johnson, Leo Gabin); Blink Studio (Dougal Wilson); and Lovely Music (Robert Ashley). We first presented The Voice and the Lens at the Ikon Gallery – without Jonathan Watkins and his team, this idea would never have got off the ground – and with additional support from the PRS for Music Foundation, Southard Reid Gallery, Sound and Music, and the Institute for Musical Research. We remain extremely grateful for their support. We are delighted to be working with the Whitechapel Gallery, Spitalfields Music and Rich Mix, and would like to make a special thank you to Arts Council England whose support has made this programme possible. Additional help and advice has been given by the Close-Up Film Centre, Trinity Laban College of Music & Dance, and by the Institute for Musical Research. Design by Polimekanos Printed by Healey’s Print Group May 2014
www.sambelinfante.com
Ed McKeon Ed is a music curator, producer, and broad caster, and co-director of Third Ear Music. He has commissioned over 100 works and presented over 200 performances and events, working with artists at the beginning and at the height of their careers, in the UK and internationally. www.thirdear.co.uk Biographies of all the artists and performers can be found at www.thevoiceandthelens.com
The Voice and the Lens 13 – 15 June 2014 The Voice and the Lens is a festival exploring the treasures of the human voice, conjured up for our eyes through film and performance. Curated by Sam Belinfante and Ed McKeon
FRIDAY / SUNDAY
SATURDAY
Whitechapel Gallery
Spitalfields Music Summer Festival at Rich Mix
77 – 82 Whitechapel High Street London E1 7QX Ticket booking: www.whitechapelgallery.org
35 – 47 Bethnal Green Road London E1 6LA Ticket booking: www.spitalfieldsmusic.org.uk
For more information visit www.thevoiceandthelens.com