EXHAUST
04.05.2024 NTGent
Ghent (B)
EXHAUST by A Two Dogs Company / Kris Verdonck is all about the execution of an internal combustion engine: over-revving a truck engine in a public space until it blows up.
Welcome to the world premiere of EXHAUST / Ajax: the execution of the very last internal combustion engine. The explosion of the heart of a monstrous truck. The death row inmate is pulled by his judges on a cart. In front of the NTGent main hall, the sentence is read and carried out. The combustion engine is sacrificed on the altar of ecological catastrophe.
EXHAUST follows the same steps as a medieval execution. The subject of the execution sentence, in this case a combustion engine, is carried through the city followed by a procession to a square where a scaffold has been set up and its crimes are read aloud from a balcony, after which the execution is carried out. The goal of EXHAUST is to bury the combustion engine once and for all. Its crimes are the broken promises of endless progress and endless growth. Violence is subjected to violence, so that catharsis can take place.
Along the way, the procession stops at places where public executions took place in medieval Ghent or where the combustion engine caused irreparable damage, such as schools and busy intersections. Together with Ghentian citizens and climate action groups, the procession is burying the unbridled drive for economic growth and progress. As blinded and self-destructive as the venerable hero Ajax, the engine is succumbing to its tragic tunnel vision. (photo © da-kuk)
Execution of the combustion engine.
The procession leaves on 4 May 2024 at 10:00 at Kinderrechtenplein Gent.
The execution takes place at 11:30 at St-Baafsplein Gent.
SHRINK 01995
20.04.2024 Sismògraf Festival
Olot (ES)
SHRINK 01995 - Two large, transparent plastic sheets and a device that gradually sucks the air out from between them leave the body vacuum-packed and vertically suspended. The transparent tube inserted between the two surfaces allows the person inside the installation to regulate the flow of air. As a result of the increasing pressure between the plastic sheets, the surface of the packed body gradually freezes into multiple micro-folds. For the duration of the performance the person inside moves slowly and changes positions, which vary from an almost embryonic position to one resembling a crucified body.
At Sismògraf Festival there will be 3 Shrinks and the bodies of 3 performers.
Photography by Martin Argyroglo at Nuit Blanche Paris 2023.
Impulse
08.04.2024 - 13.03.2024 MUTEK / Roca Barcelona Gallery
Barcelona (ES)
Impulse is a suspended work of five juxtaposed parts. Each part is made up of two metal panels linked to each other by eight wires that light up in a computerized sound and light program.
In this project, Martin Messier proposes a poetic analogy with a technological twist to the functioning of the brain, in the form of the circulation of energy rendered visible by the paths of light travelling between one panel and the other.
Tipping Point & Ce qui disparait se transforme immédiatement en éternité
06.04.2024 - 07.04.2024 Nouvelles Formes
L’Entrepôt Besançon (F)
The installation Tipping Point by Barthélemy Antoine-Loeff is a sensitive and poetic tribute to those dying glaciers. It stages the (re)birth of an artificial glacier protected by a dome; a drip is feeding the glacier that will grow during the exhibition. The device invites the viewer to attend the birth of this artificial glacier. It is inspired by the “ice stupas” invented by the engineer Sonam Wangchuk and used to fight against water shortages during the summer in Ladakh.
Between a laboratory experiment, an attempt to repair the climate or an ironic collector’s item, the installation confronts us with time and scales; 10.000 years ago, the stabilisation of our cryosphere coincided with the first human traces we found in Mesopotamia, while the fist glaciers are disappearing in 70 years under the pressure of the human activity.
Barthélemy Antoine-Loeff in collaboration with Antoine Meissonnier
Ce qui disparait se transforme immédiatement en éternité explores the multiple questions of climate repair and technosolutionism using artificial intelligence.
The installation stages a fictional laboratory for measuring the melting of symbolic mini icebergs which are generated in ice before being placed in an analysis cell with the aim of finding the ultimate iceberg: the one which, by its shape, will make a consensus, which one will take the longest to melt, based on the analyzes of the icebergs previously generated.
The installation uses a genetic algorithm specially developed to try to solve this problem of climatic optimization...
Obviously, the starting postulate is absurd, and ironic. Just like the idea of imagining being able to "repair" the climate by artificially prolonging the life of icebergs with the help of a genetic algorithm.
1 drop 1000 years
05.04.2024 - 03.05.2024 On tour
The Hague, Barcelona, Gijòn
Martin Messier - 1 drop 1000 years, an original performance that reflects on a fundamental phenomenon for the balance of life: homeostasis. The Global Conveyor Belt is a huge ocean stream that stirs up the waters of the five oceans and conveys heat on a global scale. Seeking to highlight the finesse of our homeostatic system and the fragility of its balance, the artist proposes an artistic interpretation of these intimate and global currents that happens to be essential to the survival of our species and its environment.
Rewire Festival
5 April 2024
MUTEK Barcelona
11 April 2024
LEV Festival - Gijòn
3 May 2024
Medea / They Have Waited Long Enough
21.03.2024 Gewandhaus Leipzig, Mendelssohn-Saal
Leipzig (D)
Composers Annelies Van Parys, Aftab Darvishi and Calliope Tsoupaki create new, contemporary sounds for three women who have had to wait in the wings of the great Greek myths far too long. They shine a new light on these women’s stories, add a new nuance to them and infuse them with new power. Is Medea a revengeful monster or a mother consumed with compassion? Is Circe an evil witch or a heroine filled with great humanity? And what about Penelope’s so-called helpless waiting?
Author Gaea Schoeters found the words that do these women justice: moving yet liberating. Soprano Katharine Dain sings them to life accompanied by the all-female Ragazze Quartet. Three colorful soloists engage in an intense dialogue on klarinet, duduk and canun.
"Every time we play this program, something magical happens on stage. The stories of three Greek heroines, retold by three female composers. In this concert we are complemented by the warm sounds of duduk, clarinet and canun, plus one of our favorite singers Katharine Dain." — RAGAZZE QUARTET
Annelies Van Parys
Medea (for soprano, clarinet in bes and string quartet)
text Gaea Schoeters
translation Rona Kennedy
concept Tamar Brüggemann, Wonderfeel
coproduction Lunalia, Wonderfeel, Antwerp Liedfest, Mittelfest, November Music, Oranjewoud Festival
In the framework of alles ausser flach, during the Leipziger Buchmesse
Notwehr - Belgian première
19.03.2024 Concertgebouw Brugge
Brugge (B)
Volver meets Hiroshima mon Amour in this moving story of injustice and hope.
Two women involuntarily share a prison cell: a young activist who was arrested after an illegal protest and a working-class woman who murdered her boyfriend. Their forced togetherness starts tensely, but as the nights go by, they share their fears and hopes. Notwehr brings together old and new music: a cycle of baroque madrigals by Banchieri provides a sort of echo of the past and of the outside world and intertwines with the new music of Annelies Van Parys.
A commission of La Biënnale di Venezia, in co-production with Studio Minailo, HERMESensemble & Muziektheater Transparant.
Dedicated to Maria Kalesnikava & all other brave women who lost their freedom fighting for a better world.
Annelies Van Parys & Adriano Banchieri - music
Sjaron Minailo - director
Raphael René Jacobs - director’s assistant
Gaea Schoeters - libretto
Sjaron Minailo & Maarten Warmerdam - scenography
Patricia Hofstede - costume design
Johanna Zimmer & Els Mondelaers - soprano & mezzosoprano
HERMESensemble - ensemble
B’Rock Vocal Consort - choir
Annelies Van Parys
Concertgebouw Brugge
tele-present wind
07.03.2024 - 31.03.2024 Kontejner
Zagreb (Croatia)
tele-present wind by David Bowen consists of a series of 126 x/y tilting mechanical devices connected to thin dried plant stalks installed in a gallery and a dried plant stalk connected to an accelerometer installed outdoors. When the wind blows it causes the stalk outside to sway. The accelerometer detects this movement transmitting the motion to the grouping of devices in the gallery. Therefore the stalks in the gallery space move in real-time and in unison based on the movement of the wind outside.
The sensor is installed in an outdoor location adjacent to the Visualization and Digital Imaging Lab at the University of Minnesota. Thus the individual components of the installation moved in unison as they mimicked the direction and intensity of the wind halfway around the world. As it monitored and collected real-time data from this remote and distant location, the system relayed a physical representation of the dynamic and fluid environmental conditions.
Organism at Mois Multi
01.02.2024 - 11.02.2024 Mois Multi
Québec (CA)
ORGANISM
In collaboration with Garnet Willis
Centered around a robotically prepared century-old pipe organ, Organism is an investigative platform for stochastic co-patterning via the sono-ecological indeterminacy of turbulent processes of formation.
A Casavant pipe organ built in 1910 is brought back to life after being removed from the indifference of gentrification at a heritage site in Sud-Ouest, Montreal. Organism dismantles the far-too-clean tones of the pipe organ—that reductive triumph of Western civilization over the turbulence of nature—in order to excite the natural turbulent materiality hidden within the heart of its sound-generating process.
The rescued pipes, along with their pneumatic architecture, have been carefully modified to remove stabilizations which historically aimed to eliminate turbulent flow and its uncontrolled sound world, robotically unleashing timbres unheard after centuries of sonic repression.
The Dark Rooms vertical
18.01.2024 - 04.02.2024 secret location
Berlin (D)
tele-present wind - This installation consists of a series of 42 x/y tilting mechanical devices connected to thin dried plant stalks installed in a gallery and a dried plant stalk connected to an accelerometer installed outdoors. When the wind blows it causes the stalk outside to sway. The accelerometer detects this movement transmitting the motion to the grouping of devices in the gallery. Therefore the stalks in the gallery space move in real-time and in unison based on the movement of the wind outside.