CHRISTINA KUBISCH
CHRISTINA KUBISCH
1 Eliane Radigue, Naldjorlank The first entirely acoustic composition by the pioneer of electroacoustic music, whose work explores the sonorities of the cello in complex and surprising ways. This piece was created in collaboration with Charles Curtis, who also performed it at Berlin’s Interface festival.
2 Maryanne Amacher, Gravity—Music for Sound Joined Rooms Series A ninety-minute installation in the form of a “sound screening” made for the tower of a former baroque church in the center of Berlin (now Singuhr-Hörgalerie in Parochial, a gallery for sound art), whose architecture allows for fascinating acoustic choreography.
3 Keiji Haino, performance at Sound Forest festival, Riga, Latvia It took Haino three hours to complete his sound check, but it was worth the wait: His long gray hair and theatrical vitality make his performances a treat for the ears and the eyes.
4 Sons of God, Swedenborg, Stockholm New Music Festival, Sweden Leif Elggren and Kent Tankred, aka Sons of God, filled a former factory space with the noise of clashing metal plates in a tense two-hour performance inspired by Emanuel Swedenborg’s 1758 theological treatise, Heaven and Hell.
5 Steve Roden, Lines & Spaces Two self-released, one-sided LPs that can be listened to individually or simultaneously. Roden’s musical compositions, guided by simple concepts and made with basic materials, are equal in quality to his painting and sculpture, in which he combines the conceptual and the intuitive.
6 Folke Rabe and Jan Bark, Argh! (Kning Disk) A retrospective of the Swedish artists and musicians’ pioneering work from the early 1960s to the present. Their music effortlessly combines the electroacoustic and the all-out trashy.
7 John Cage, 18 Microtonal Ragas: Solo 58, performed by Amelia Cuni and musicians at Festival März Musik, Berlin The first performances of all eighteen ragas from Cage’s Song Books, 1970. Amelia Cuni, an Italian-born singer trained in India, fused the operation of chance with classical Indian composition structures in a highly complex performance integrating voice, electronics, and instrumentation.
8 Jonathan Coleclough & Murmer, Husk (Integrated Circuit Records) Are they artificial or natural? Analog or digital? Coleclough’s recordings of the natural environment are masterfully produced, evoking mysterious abandoned buildings or walks through a forest at dusk.
9 Shinji Aoyama, Eli, Eli, Lema Sabachthani? (My God, My God, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?) This film, which stars Masaya Nakahara (Violent Onsen Geisha), feels more like a concert. Two musicians devoted to the search for the essence of sound are asked to cure their friends of a “suicide virus” by harnessing the power of music.
10 Marc Behrens and Paulo Raposo, Hades (AND/OAR) Behrens draws on his background in product design to create compositions that are far removed from Frankfurt’s click-’n’-cut aesthetic—his second collaboration with Paulo Raposo is based on recordings made on ferries and on harbor quays
Christina Kubisch, an artist working with sound and light, has exhibited recently at The Kitchen, New York; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK; and in the Sound Forest Festival in Riga, Latvia.
