As of May, the 31st, the official “Riga 2014” sound art exhibition “SKAN II” will be open to visitors. This will be the first part of the exhibition, consisting of seven works and lasting until June, the 20th. Its main venue is the the Botanical Garden of the University of Latvia at Kandavas Street 2, as well as, in the case of Pascal Broccolichi’s work, the Kalnciems Quarter gallery. „SKAN II”, organized by the Skanu Mezs association for adventurous music and related arts, focuses on presenting latest developments in sound art as well as directly and indirectly linking this form of art to the wooden architecture of Riga.
As already mentioned, the first part of “SKAN II” will run from May, the 31st, till June, the 20th, and its main venue, apart from the Kalnciems Quarter gallery, is the the Botanical Garden of the University of Latvia, therefore presenting an exciting collision of sound art, architecture, urban environment and nature – works will be exhibited throughout the whole territory of the garden. The works of this first part of „SKAN II” have been selected in curatorial collaboration with the international network „Resonance”, which is devoted to producing and presenting new European sound art.
Further, we would like to introduce few of the first exposition’s works.
Peter Bogers
Untamed Choir by the Dutch media artist Peter Bogers is an audio installation that consists of 40 small speakers hanging from the ceiling, playing 30 separate audio channels. Twenty of these speakers are positioned into a circle, cones pointing inwards. The rest of them are divided over the exhibition room. The human voice is used as the ‘sound basis’. We hear continual, gradual changes ranging between ‘scream’ and ‘song’ in various tonal pitches.Three different vocal parts in three different octaves are alternated and connected to each other by a screaming voice. During the vocal parts the ‘soundscape’ gradually changes as one moves through the room. With every move the listener makes, a slight and subtle change in the audiospectrum will present itself.
The Beaters is a collaboration between Thomas Rutgers, who completed a Master’s degree in composition in context at the Utrecht School of the Arts, and Jitske Blom, an interdisciplinary designer and artist. It is a percussive, mechanical sculpture. “The installation consists of a large sounding box with dozens of beaters attached to it,” They describe the work. “But there’s more than meets the eye: materiality is disguised, movement manipulated, and even gravity defied, showing us how visual information can make us hear in a different way.”
Table d’harmonie
In addition to the six works, exhibited at the Botanical garden, French artist Pascal Broccolichi’s work “Table d’harmonie” will be installed at the Kalnciems Quarter gallery.It is an intriguing sound work whose formal purity evokes minimalist installation as much as a repetitive pattern drawn from an all over perspective. Inspired as an artificial soundscape, the image of “Table d’harmonie” is structured like a horizon separating the sky and earth. But soon a resonance is established between sound and the black mass of the drawing where Black corindon dust is spread out on the floor composing strictly regular craters. A loudspeaker is laid out in the content of each crater. The sound piece is composed of low frequencies recorded with the help of a hydrophonic sensor revealing the patterns of sound flux in different parts of the river Daugava or the Gulf of Riga.
The full line-up of artists, featured in the first part of SKAN II: Jitske Blom & Thomas Rutgers, Peter Bogers, Aernoudt Jacobs, Signe Liden, David Helbich, Pascal Broccolichi, Stefan Roigk.
This, however, is only the first part of “SKAN II” with two other month-long parts to follow, lasting until the 24th of August. Artists, such as Leif Elggren, C.M. von Hausswolff, Max Eastley, Christian Skjodt, Voldemārs Johansons, Evelīna Deičmane and many more will be featured in the remaining two installments of the exhibition.
The exhibition’s main supporters are: the Foundation Riga 2014, EUNIC (European Union National Institutes for Culture) Global, the British Council, the Danish Cultural Institute, the French Institute, the Goethe Institute in Riga and the Nordic Council of Ministers’ Office in Riga (EUNIC Riga Representative Office).
The exhibition at the Botanical garden is open to visitors from Wednesday to Sunday between the hours of 13.00 and 18.00 (entrance for adults – 3 EUR). The exhibition at the Kalnciems Quarter is open to visitors from Monday to Saturday between the hours of 13.00 and 18.00 (entrance – free of charge).
Video:
Peter Bogers’ “The Untamed Choir”
“The Beaters” by Jitske Blom and Thomas Rutgers
