Anri Sala's Aural Experiences | Brilliant Ideas Ep. 72

brilliant ideas powered by Hyundai Motor [Music] [Music] this one of the amazing artists of our time it keeps inventing new amazing experiences an assortment of video color and sound amarice Allah's work demands your attention isn't that right that's because of how he films how he creates his works the attention he pays to the lighting to the camerawork to editing to sequencing striving for communication that goes beyond the limits of language and really works with music with videos drawings photography with many sinks his exhibitions challenge the viewer to question politics music and history he trusts the intelligence and the ability of his audience to create their own story my way is to heat for something that I don't know yet how to resolve so there is a that there will be a risk-taking and this is also what keeps it exciting [Music] although his art can take a variety of forms from documentary news news to live performance its enemy's ability to manipulate sound that makes his work unique one of the reasons I got interested in sound and music versus language is to open up the possibility of communication to other means so that it's for the viewer and the listener to decide upon the a given meaning or or a given way of the interpretation of a situation and me by by talking about this I just give my own version of it amarice fascination with video and sound was immediately clear in his breakthrough work into Vista a film he made while he was still a student the amazing thing with honorary was that from the get-go from this very first appearance of his in the international art world within the Vista was already all there his language was there this wasn't the work of a young emerging artists this was the work of an accomplished artist the film is itself a journey driven by sound rather the lack of sound after a Marie finds an old recording of his mother speaking at a political conference without audio for many it just boiled down to a kind of narrative a very surprising narrative about an artist finding an old tape but formerly the work was much more complex the film like many of his early works is intimately tied to the political history of unreason ative country Albania by November 29th 1944 communist subversion under red leader Enver Hoxha results in only one governing party being recognized and Alby throughout much of the 20th century Albania was under the thumb of the repressive communist dictator Enver Hoxha who imposed a strict censorship on Western art in the educational curriculum in the art school anything in terms of art history and references everything from Impressionism and on was completely forbidden so not to be seen or only to be spoken about very briefly as a critique against an [Music] enlisting the help of deaf people to lip read Henry recovers his mother's words and shows her the results opening up a window into her and her country's past she was very surprised to see how unarticulated the interview sound and this happened because I believe the language was so much stiffened in order to serve the the ideology of the regime that if you hear it's 25 years later you you are amazed and and incident at the same time by the by the stiffness of the language I was completely fascinated by the way he had the question of memories how memories work in someone life and it was really about language it was about the different language that anri's mother has in the late 90s from the language she had in the 70s the way that language in a way makes our experience this film signaled the beginning of a Murray's desire to find a language that was immune to the manipulation of words I think it what happened was after losing of interests for words and language as a means of communication a distrust I think in Teresa was like an important moment of realizing this of not trusting language of the epicness of the language and the how it control and in dummy Iike lorry made five years later it was the power of color rather than language that provoked political optimism in Albania the film follows the former mayor of Tirana Eddie Rama now the democratically elected prime minister and his project to paint the decaying war-torn buildings in vivid colors traditional David tradition institution trans easy real reason Britain the trail it was very interesting at the beginning there was resistance but little by little people started to actually see that it created his whole new energy look to do with the energy a positive energy in Tehran and unrest create an amazing film which again you know his films and other documentaries is not healing not just merely document I mean the film is very much in itself a paintings filmed sometimes at night sometimes in the day it seems in on some people who seem totally forgotten by this process of transforming Albania and it also focuses on some of the wonderful murals themselves so this is a work that deals in a very specific way with the politics of Tirana and with a political campaign by teranas Mayer that Fionan Kreitman dish dirty kitchen see vichy the jesusí or God so this was clearly an attempt to truly connect to Li inspire in the people the importance of what we share what we have in common the only way of bringing it was by doing in a way the completely bypassed language and the colors had this quality to impact immediately life of the people with very very little means and resources but it would prove to be the language of sound that would dominate an Rees later works after the break we'll see an rhe prepare for one of his most ambitious exhibitions so far [Music] [Music] [Music] Anri saleh willfully works around the edges of language preferring to use music as a form of communication [Music] and this is the case in his latest work a sound and video installation for an upcoming solo exhibition in Berlin it's the film which is about the relation between two very well-known songs the Marseillaise the French anthem and the International the workers anthem what interested him most in the very beginning is how they are politically read how they've been appropriated through history for the international it's a it's a song which means so much about this about communist about defending common rights but at the same time in a given part of in a moment of history it was the internal Soviet Union so at the same time could be rightly and easily perceived strong people as the anthem of an oppressor at the given moment it's a hugely ambitious project the film will not only explore the history of these two pieces of music but the music itself will actually dictate the focus of the camera one element which was very important for me is how to to have the the music to take control of the filming for example if the music that decides where the focus will be so in a way the the music is not only playing for the ear but is also directing the eye this encapsulate San Ruiz use of music more than merely a soundtrack to his films it's a main character actively participating in the film's narrative [Music] [Music] this is perhaps best seen in long sorrow where a jazz saxophonist perch on what appears to be a balcony plays over an endless modernist housing estate only as the film develops do we realize there's no balcony I wanted to invite a musician to suspend him on the top floor of the building it's a very long building long it's called long a Yammer which a way to translate it is long sorrow and somehow the music would become an extension to the architecture or something that would make the long solo even longer I think a Murray's interesting sound has a lot to do with the fact that you know it's one step away from language because obviously language we're having a conversation and you know we're very much in control of the language we're using and I think the thing Andrey is interested in is that sound is kind of one step away from that it sits outside somehow our direct control and interesting music because compared to language is much more implicit it has a way to convey without telling things it produces narrative without storytelling Emery uses sound to shed light on the locations in his films many of which have controversial histories Tlatelolco clash is set in excavated Aztec ruins in Mexico City but this was also the site where an estimated 300 students were killed by the Mexican military and police [Music] using a song that everyone remembers but presenting a disjointed version of it Henry alludes to the notion of historical memory and in answer me set in an old Cold War surveillance tower a woman struggles to talk to a man who responds only with cacophonous drumming that way things will be out in the open and we'll know what to do is it that so answer me one becomes aware that there is a crisis in this communication and then in a way it's echoes with the fact that the very building was was was built for the eavesdropping for intercepting communication in a moment of of of a political lack of communication in the height of the Cold War the history of nuclear facilities in parts of Germany or the history of Cold War architecture so there is a kind of historical significance to some of the things that he deals with but his interest in a wider cultural background for his work different musicians different literary sources that's also one of the things that makes him a very compelling artist but more than just a setting the architecture of the dome affects the conversation to the extent where it becomes a character in the film I thought what if I take two sentences and and and staged them in that space where what will come across is the loudness of the silences between the words because everything is so loud so silence even is very loud within the geodesic dome of the place and therefore the space itself would be so present it would become more important than the than the characters in the in the film answer me one of his most critically acclaimed works Ravel Ravel unravel was Frances entry into the 2013 Venice Biennale but it was exhibited in the German Pavilion as the two countries swapped pavilions to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Alizee treaty two compositions drift in and out of tempo while in another room a video plays of a DJ working tirelessly to resync the music [Music] so you as a viewer think about your time but you're not just thinking about the time of now but different types of time when was the recording made when did Andrey film the people recording it what's the history of the musician the history of that song the history of the composition and so on and he layers these types of time the piece uses a score composed by a French man for a pianist who lost his hand fighting for the Germans in the first world war novel unravel and it does represent definitely what has been interesting in the past ten years the relation between space architecture sound and in music but also the context of political context where they come from and it is laden with so many subtle connections to the history of franco-german relations it can be quite hard to unravel it's ok if someone doesn't see the political context you will see something else I think art work you know he's a multiplicity of experiences and we can elaborate our relation to a art work in very different way after the break we get a rare glimpse into the precision and complexity that amory's exhibitions have become renowned for Oh [Music] the Esther shipper gallery in Berlin may be a building site at the moment but in a few weeks it'll be transformed into an resellers latest exhibition called takeover Henry is famous for creating immersive experiences like this the project is conceived as being a pair because it's two films which are playing on each sides of a screen which is in the middle of a space so what we are doing here is to make sure and to bring to the full potential of this musical relation between the two and also deal with the aspects of the acoustics of the space and Anri is meticulously fine-tuning the audio a process that can take over a week mixing is one of my favorite moments when I work because it's the moment when you push the potential to its completeness r'mante pile attack now or release tailor not an reason to standing with olivier his trusted sound engineer is almost instinctive with Olivier we've been working for 18 years together so it's it's it's like a continuous pleasure and every time we can we can go further elana Sebastiaan curve not katanas TV visibility summation ' on coffee the villa kuda lava it's very interesting because is someone so interested by sound so forest engineer it's really with privilege with him we are searching on each projects new ways for listening to the song the sound is very important it's very often like the trigger of a narrative or a story so we anticipate and we discuss about how to record things how to approach the thing when Unruh puts a group of works together he isn't only thinking about an image a projection he's not just thinking about the viewer sitting in front of her film passively watching it and then leaving the space he wants the whole experience of architecture and time to count and to work on the viewer the way that undry has worked with the space is very special as a visitor you like you're like free to go where you where you wanna go and and and you can make you can really make your own exhibition and this movement is fundamental to the artwork the viewers physical position in the gallery altering the sounds that they hear this is a bit like a 360 degrees space in terms of the Box in terms of the space the volume but also the sounds meaning that there is a different portion of the sounds that one listens to depending over where one is in the space so for example in relation to this side the piano will hear more the higher pitches and then if one goes on the other side you hear more than the lower features and one is in the middle you hear more than the middle octave and somehow is the listener and the viewer who who added depending on where one chooses to be it's another layer to the editing of the sound this produces more awareness about where one is in the space forever you stand you're gonna have a different experience this is something that I respect a lot about angries he trusts the intelligence and the ability of his audience to to create their own story his films are never kind of like overwhelming the viewer is somehow diminished I think with Amory it's the opposite the viewers not diminished at all the viewer is somehow encouraged to do something he somehow he or she is very much participating this interaction has become synonymous with an Riis exhibitions recently at the serpentine gallery in London long sorrow made another appearance but this time an re-enlisted a second saxophonist to improvise live alongside the video because I think the saxophone player played several thousand hours during the exhibition at the same time every single day I think that's why Anna is so important and why Amory is so successful and why he's so influential in the art world exhibition da an opportunity to create extraordinary experiences and a tourism Astra death [Music] Henry Salas films are more than just visually beautiful they're imbued with complex layers of politics language and history yet Henry's most enduring mark on contemporary art may be in the medium of the exhibition drawing his audiences in with arresting experiences he'll think how do I turn art from being a place for entertainment into a place for real thought it is capacity of merging different disciplines in a very original form that make an Restless work particularly special unreserve undecayed he always was a von Bucky what I wish for is that as time passes by to still be able to keep this necessity that if you do things you do them because deep inside there is a necessity to do it [Music] you [Music] brilliant ideas powered by hyundai motor

Channel: Bloomberg Television

Views: 21,898

Keywords: Bloomberg, art, brilliant ideas, Anri Sala, Politics, Music, History

Id: 9l9U-0q-Sm8

Length: 24min 10sec (1450 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 06 2018