8th Berlin Biennale, Sounds Like Isolation to Me

Mexican artist Mario Garcia Torres had asked me to collaborate on a  very exciting piece with him for the 8th Berlin Biennale. Its is about Conlon Nancarrow and currently shown at the Museum Dahlem in Berlin.

Sounds Like Isolation to Me (n/d) is a museographical essay about the struggle between the social consciousness of the avant-garde thinking and the romantic aura behind the idea of segregation as a space for creativity. On it’s background is the story and practice of Conlon Nancarrow (1912–1997), a US-born Mexican-naturalized composer who immigrated to Mexico in 1940, fearing possible harassment because of his leftist political views, and who created an overwhelming, mostly “temporal dissonance” repertoire in relative peer isolation, with little contact with other avant-garde musicians of the twentieth century. This presentation puts into question the idea of the studio as an isolated space, and explores the space between creation and presentation, through a number of objects, documents, art works and a sound component created specifically by Berlin-based composer Nils Frahm.

more information : 8th Berlin Biennale

photos by Jens Ziehe and Frederic Gmeiner