Sound on the 4th Floor
Compiled and arranged by Gerwald Rockenschaub
Videos, audio and sound works, sound sculptures, pictures, graphics
Design: © Gerwald Rockenschaub, 2019
f.l. Robert Longo (VG Bildkunst, Bonn 2019), Josef Albers VG Bildkunst, Bonn 2019, Hans/Jean Arp (VG Bildkunst, Bonn 2019).
f.l. Hartmut Landauer (VG Bildkunst, Bonn 2019), Walter Giers.
f.l. Hartmut Landauer (VG Bildkunst, Bonn 2019), Brian O'Doherty: Aspen Box, Xavier Veilhan. (VG Bildkunst, Bonn 2019)
f.l. Martin Boyce, Rune Mields (VG Bildkunst, Bonn 2019), Camille Graeser (VG Bildkunst, Bonn 2019), John M Armleder, K.R.H. Sonderborg (VG Bildkunst, Bonn 2019).
f.l. Camille Graeser (VG Bildkunst, Bonn 2019), John M Armleder, K.R.H. Sonderborg, Anton Stankowski, Rosemarie Trockel (VG Bildkunst, Bonn 2019), Bernhard Höke.
f.l. K. R. H. Sonderborg (VG Bildkunst, Bonn 2019), Anton Stankowski, Rosemarie Trockel (VG Bildkunst, Bonn 2019), Bernhard Höke, Xavier Veilhan (VG Bildkunst, Bonn 2019).
f.l. Martin Boyce, Rune Mields (VG Bildkunst, Bonn 2019), Gregor Hildebrandt, Camille Graeser (VG Bildkunst, Bonn 2019).
f.l. Rune Mields (VG Bildkunst, Bonn 2019), Gregor Hildebrandt, Günter Fruhtrunk.
f.l. Gregor Hildebrandt, Horst Bartnig, Günter Fruhtrunk.
f.l. Park Chan-Kyong, Lerato Shadi.
f.l. Park Chan-Kyong, Lerato Shadi.
f.l. Ugo Rondinone, Horst Bartnig, Michael Zahn.
f.l. Michael Zahn, Verena Loewensberg, John Tremblay, Ugo Rondinone.
f.l. Adolf Fleischmann, Ugo Rondinone, Horst Bartnig.
f.l. Markus Huemer (VG Bildkunst, Bonn 2019), Adolf Fleischmann, Ugo Rondinone.
Photo: Hans-Georg Gaul, Berlin
Following our successful cooperative exhibitions with artist-curators in recent years, the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection was able to invite Gerwald Rockenschaub as our ›Visual Curator‹ for ›Sound on the 4th Floor‹. For his installation and visual concept, he has selected around 50 works from the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection, stretching from modern to contemporary art, with works suggesting musical structures visually and creating these structures with the help of sound, composition, noise or visual rhythms. Our exhibition focuses on aspects of immateriality and the imagined visibility of Sound. There are no tones, noises or sounds to be heard in the space during this exhibition. An Audio device allows you to call up each sound track individually. At the same time, the audio guide also offers an array of electronic tracks composed by Gerwald Rockenschaub for this exhibition.
Sound, music, rhythm are omnipresent in the 20th century and contemporary art. Representatives of Bauhaus and Classical Modernism (Albers, Arp, etc.) conceive picture series according to musical principles of form with theme and variation (“The music behaves like a clock for the form and effect of my pictures”, Josef Albers) or accompany their artistic designs with sound poems and instrumental choreographies. Concrete and constructive art (Fleischmann, Fruhtrunk, Graeser, Loewensberg, etc.) contains formal inspirations that lend a visual translation to the musical variations of the fugue, the concept of counterpoint or the chord combinations of jazz. Comparable musical references can be found in the Neo Geo art of the 1980s (Rockenschaub), while other artists simultaneously integrate excerpts of musical scores directly into their pictures (Mields). Musical material has been present in multimedia art in many ways since around 1990: Collages with Audio Cassette tape (Hildebrandt), videos based on everyday sound elements or accompanied by commissioned compositions (Fleury, Signer and Zobernig around 1990 to Chan-kyong, 2015), further sculptures that vary the forms of musical instruments or places of language (Boyce, Veilhan, Roehr, Ulrichs), finally computer-generated beats, sounds and frequencies that are audibly underlaid or purely abstractly implemented in order to appeal to the imagination of the Viewer.
Curators of the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection:
Renate Wiehager
with Nadine Henrich and Sarah Maske
Listen to Gerwald Rockenschaub in conversation with rbb Kulturradio (in German language)
Downloads
Artists
- Josef Albers
- John M Armleder
- Jean Arp
- Horst Bartnig
- Martin Boyce
- Adolf Fleischmann
- Günter Fruhtrunk
- Walter Giers
- Camille Graeser
- Guan Xiao
- Gregor Hildebrandt
- Markus Huemer
- Bernhard Höke
- Takehito Koganezawa
- Alicja Kwade
- Hartmut Landauer
- Verena Loewensberg
- Robert Longo
- Ma Qiusha
- Rune Mields
- Kirsten Mosher
- Brian O’Doherty
- Pak Sheung Chuen
- Chan-Kyong Park
- Gerwald Rockenschaub
- Peter Roehr
- Lerato Shadi
- K. R. H. Sonderborg
- Anton Stankowski
- John Tremblay
- Rosemarie Trockel
- Andrew Tshabangu
- Timm Ulrichs
- Xavier Veilhan
- Xu Zhen produced by MadeIn Company
- Michael Zahn
- Heimo Zobernig
Events
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-Mercedes-Benz Contemporary
Free guided tour (German language) - Composition in Music and Art
Josef Albers, John M Armleder, Camille Graeser, Rune Mields, Park Chan-kyong
The concept of composition is an important creative foundation, not only in music. In the visual arts, composition is associated with assembly and structure, perspective and symmetry – terms that are just as relevant to music with different weightings. Musical composition means the “musical work fixed [and multiplied] in notes”, more abstractly and more generally defined as “an artistic creation, compilation made according to certain criteria.” The guided tour examines composition as artistic principle through looking at works from abstract and realistic painting, as well a video art.
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-Mercedes-Benz Contemporary
DECONCEPTUAL VOICINGS - Sound Performance by Marc Matter & Stefan Römer
The presentation of the project consists of a performance of musical compositions from interviews with conceptual artists – from rather short tracks like »The West thinks you imitate« with the voice of Shilpa Gupta to minimal pieces like »Using, subverting and utilizing conventions« with the voice of Yvonne Rainer.
This is a tribute to all the artists involved: Martha Rosler, Ed Ruscha, Andrea Fraser, Yvonne Rainer, Shilpa Gupta, Art & Language, Lawrence Weiner, Sol LeWitt.
In the communication for this project Martha Rosler stated in a mail: »I have to remark that conceptual art seems dead and buried in the US, for the moment at least. It is invisible because it is not presently seen as compatible with what might be called identitarianism in art as a reigning idea and urgent task. As Chris Marker long ago observed, most people find it difficult to have more than one idea in their heads at a time—and of course, institutions even more so.« – Good ideas should be amplified.
The documentation of the project will be released as a vinyl LP by Slimvolume and Mount Analogue.
Supported by Musikfonds e. V. with project funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media
Marc Matter (Bad Säckingen)
Researching artist and lecturer, founding member of the artist group Institut für Feinmotorik (Institute for Fine Motorics). Regular performances in sound art, experimental music and club music since 1994. Independent curator (Salon des Amateurs 2004- 2012, QO2 Sound Art Space Brussels 2018); co-founder of the cOsmOsmOse Festival (2014) and the eponymous edition, together with Swantje Lichtenstein. He has been conducting artistic research (Beinecke Library, Yale University), for a number of years, writing texts, solo performances in the field of sound arts and acoustic language art, and commissioned works for radio (SWR, WDR, DLR Kultur).
Stefan Römer (Berlin)
is a de-conceptual artist; current performances in the field of sound art: CTM Berlin 2018, Uncertain Sounds-Festival Galerie Weißer Elefant, Berlin 2018; sound carrier: "die erweiterung des alphabets" (" expanding the alphabet"), 8", 1987; band project: Stan Back & The Noise Glam since 2008: Stan Back, The Ups and Downs of a Hermeneutical Transvestite, CD, 2011; Stan Back & The Noise Glam, nervous politics, 2015; also: Conceptual Paradise, Essayfilm 2006; Prize for Art Criticism of the ADKV in 2000; since 1999 teaching activities, as professor for New Media and Creative Writing; publication of theoretical writings and artist books; initiator of the artist activist group FrischmacherInnen, Cologne 1992-2000.
Event location: Mercedes-Benz Contemporary, Haus Huth (4th floor), Alte Potsdamer Straße 5, 10785 Berlin
Please register by email at Maria.Radke@Daimler.com
Because the number of participants is limited, the date of receipt determines eligibility. Participation is free.
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-Mercedes-Benz Contemporary
Free guided tour (German language) - Acoustic Immersion Strategies in Contemporary Art
Sylvie Fleury, Alicja Kwade, Ma Qiusha, Lerato Shadi, Heimo Zobernig,
Since the 1960s, contemporary art demonstrates an increasing level of interest in the ways of dealing with and experiencing immersion. In order to dissolve the boundary between the work and the recipient, sounds are an effective, versatile artistic instrument that enables ‘immersion’ also in the sense of a physical perception of fictitious spaces by evoking acoustic immersion effects. By looking a.o. at video works by Chinese artist Ma Qiusha and the performances by South African artist Lerato Shadi, in which sound Body(conditions) are put in relation to each other, the guided tour examines the potentials of acoustic immersion.
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-Mercedes-Benz Contemporary
Free guided tour (German language) - Words from Mouth to Abys
Hans/Jean Arp, Martin Boyce, Brian O’Doherty, Timm Ulrichs, Peter Roehr
The avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century had a great interest in compositions that transcended the boundaries between the realms of language, sound and visuals. The tour looks at the shapes of merging between lyric and music in the works of Jean/Hans Arp, whose associative play with linguist ambiguity finds its pictorial counterpart in his collages, sculptures and reliefs. The dissolution of traditional barriers between visual art, poetry, theater and music, with the inclusion of materials previously outside the realm of art, also inspired the artist and critc Brian O’Doherty. Looking at his Aspen box and other works in the show, the tour talks about works in which intermedia boundaries dissolve.
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-Mercedes-Benz Contemporary
Concert: New Piano Trio – I love Pop
Pop songs are everywhere. They rule the world and the global music market, influencing the taste of whole generations. Everyone hears pop day in and day out … and it is completely taken for granted. “I love Pop” is thus nothing exceptional. But when the ”wild three“ headed by composer and violinist Florian Willeitner take up pop, something very different happens. The innermost heart and the secrets of pop are decoded using the resources of classical piano trio art. The result: high-tension music, coupled with poetry and emotion.
The New Piano Trio has a refreshing emotional directness. Its catchy grooves and fresh sounds go hand in hand with complex compositions. The result: a serious independent voice in contemporary classical music, which is also open to folk idioms, pop and jazz. These three fearless musicians operate at the highest level of chamber music.
Violinist and composer Florian Willeitner is the mastermind of the New Piano Trio. The violin virtuoso admits no thought barriers, allowing himself to be inspired by traditional musical cultures and by classical, pop, rock, jazz, or folk in equal measure. Willeitner’s works are performed at famous concert houses such as the Musikverein Wien, Vienna or the Festspielhaus Salzburg. He has also won major competitions, such as the Zbigniew Seifert Competition in Cracow.
Cellist Ivan Turkalj is a passionate and masterful performer on his instrument. He plays the classical repertoire with the same ease and conviction, with which he engages with innovative projects that extend to Indie rock. As a founder member of successful bands like The Hidden Cameras or The Erlkings, he has been a guest at venues including the Konzerthaus Berlin, the Barbican Hall London and the WDR Cologne recording hall. He is also well received by audiences at festivals like the Schleswig Holstein Musikfestival or the Heidelberger Frühling.
Pianist Alexander Wienand is a composer and piano wizard. He does not view the worlds of jazz and of classical so-called “serious music” as separate and draws musical inspiration from both of them. Wienand discovers new vistas of sound in an instrument that everyone thinks they are completely familiar with. He is found at festivals such as the Cologne Jazznight and the Jazzahead Bremen, and has performed with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and at the Musikfest Stuttgart. He has also received the Bayrische Kunstförderpreis.
Event location: Mercedes-Benz Contemporary, Haus Huth (4th floor), Alte Potsdamer Straße 5, 10785 Berlin
Please register by email at Maria.Radke@Daimler.com
Because the number of participants is limited, the date of receipt determines eligibility. Participation is free.
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-Mercedes-Benz Contemporary
Free guided tour (German language) - Sound art: Structuring, Scattering, Mixing
Guan Xiao, Takehito Koganezawa, Gerwald Rockenschaub (tracks & graphics), Xu Zhen
Sound is present in this exhibition in its most diverse shapes: as structuring principle, as strategy of adaptation, to organize and mix. The Chinese artist Guan Xiao collected images from the World Wide Web and newly combined them as readymade-material. He thereby uses sound as structuring moment to create an order of the visual material. The slow sequence of changing body positions in the video of Xu Zhen are accompanied by spherical sounds. Takehito Koganezawa created a sound-collage, which is composed by mere coincidence: 99 sound mountings, each 15 seconds, are combined with the shots of an abandoned former East-Berlin apartment. Artist Gerwald Rockenschaub composed tracks of electronic music as an optional soundtrack, inviting the viewer to transform the perception of the works on view.
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-Mercedes-Benz Contemporary
Free guided tour (German language) - “Air to party in” Rhythm in Painting and Photography
Horst Bartnig, Adolf Fleischmann, John Tremblay, Andrew Tshabangu
The desire to introduce the potentials of music into abstract painting manifests in the course of art history in very diverse shapes and varying conceptual approaches. The guided tour looks at works, which deal with rhythm as artistic strategy, as evident in abstract paintings by Bartnig, Fleischmann and Tremblay. John Tremblay forms relationships between color and shapes, creating positive and negative spaces. Shapes repeat in rows and create optical effects, which suggest energy, expansion and movement. Besides works of abstract painting, the tour also asks how rhythm can be a tool to suggest movement and transformation in the photographic imagery of Tshabangu.
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-Mercedes-Benz Contemporary, 1st Floor, Haus Huth
No Lands Song - Screening with film director Ayat Najafi
The German-French documentary film ‘No Lands Song’ is about the Iranian composer Sara Najafi and her efforts to organize a concert in Tehran with a group of singers (Iran, Tunisia, France). Her aim is to open up the political system. Since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, women have been forbidden to perform within Iran as soloists. In the movie music is used as one of the strongest physical forms of expression in order to underscore the extent to which life in Iran is restricted by social and political repression. The film shows a new generation of musicians dealing with the problems encountered in their country. The action unfolds to a soundtrack of classical and contemporary songs and compositions.
After the film, you are invited to attend the discussion with the director and scriptwriter Ayat Najafi.
Musicians: Sara Najafi, Élise Caron, Jeanne Cherhal, Emel Mathlouthi, Parvin Namazi, Sayeh Sodeyfi
Ayat Najafi is a theater and film director living in Berlin. Back in 2003, he founded Arta Atelier, which focuses on interdisciplinary and multimedia approaches to art. No Lands Song won the award for best documentary film at the Montreal World Film Festival 2014 and the Lola German Film Prize in 2017, among others.
Event location: Mercedes-Benz Contemporary, Haus Huth (4th floor), Alte Potsdamer Straße 5, 10785 Berlin
Please register by email at Maria.Radke@Daimler.com
Because the number of participants is limited, the date of receipt determines eligibility. Participation is free.
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-Mercedes-Benz Contemporary
Free guided tour (German language) - Composition in Music and Art
Josef Albers, Gregor Hildebrandt, Rune Miedls, Michael Zahn
The concept of composition is an important creative foundation, not only in music. In the visual arts, composition is associated with assembly and structure, perspective and symmetry – terms that are just as relevant to music with different weightings. Musical composition means the “musical work fixed [and multiplied] in notes”, more abstractly and more generally defined as “an artistic creation, compilation made according to certain criteria.” The guided tour examines composition as artistic principle through looking at works from abstract and realistic painting, as well a video art.
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Guided tour (German language) - Artist-curator Gerwald Rockenschaub
Aspects of architecture theory and design in the exhibition „Sound on the 4th Floor“