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Annebarbe Kau + Steina Vasulka + Freya Hattenberger + Peter Simon + Gary Hill + Marcel Odenbach + Susan Hefuna + Franziska Megert + Dara Birnbaum + Michael Langoth + Georg Maas
view!voices, the fourth issue of video art kitchen from imai, highlights 11 video art works from the distribution program which examine the specific feature of video: audiovisuality. The selected national and international works from the period 1979 to 2006 illustrate diverse aesthetic connections between sound and vision.
«Video» is derived from Latin and means «I see». This is naturally not the whole story as what I see in the video I can also hear and what I hear I can see. Sound and vision interact. This synchronicity distinguishes video as a genuine audiovisual medium and is radically expressed in «video noise», the specific noise also known as «salt and pepper noise». We usually perceive this noise to be interference and form the impression that something is missing, namely sound and vision. Yet the message of «video noise» is the original audio and visual signal of the video. Many early video artists such as Steina and Woody Vasulka and Dara Birnbaum experimented with this structural characteristic of video. They open up an exciting playing field of imaginative references between the audio and visual levels. With care and attention to detail the sound and visual elements in the selected video art works are concisely composed to interact.
The fourth issue of the video art kitchen consists of single channel video art works and two video performances which with their diverse flexibility of composition question our viewing and listening habits and show there are no limits to the audio-visual.
Click on the individual art positions to directly access the selected art works in our online catalogue where further material is available for viewing and download.
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Annebarbe Kau: Hommage an Schwitters, 1996, 1:55 min
The artist updated Kurt Schwitter's Ur-Sonate (1925) as a simulated performance. Human sounds are heard in various tones and timbre which form corresponding letters in variable lettering, size and colour to become a score. We are left to assess whether the sounds bring the score to life or whether the score is merely a basis for the performance.
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Steina Vasulka: Voice Windows, 1986, 8:10 min
Steina Vasulka started experimenting with electronic media in 1969. For Voice Windows she used a processor to break up the video image content into abstract graphical patterns and three-dimensional shapes. The video frequency is manipulated through voice modulations of the sound artist Joan La Barbara and this allows Vasulka to establish a richly varied field of interaction between the video image and the voice. Subjective acoustic patterns are created of urban recordings of Santa Fes and the countryside of New Mexico.
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Freya Hattenberger: Sirene, 2006, 3:30 min
In the Greek myth of Ulysses the sirens celebrate the art of seduction with their songs. The singing produced by Freya Hattenberger on the other hand is created by a different type of seductive art. It is not the high-pitched singing of the seducer we hear, but the desired acoustic feedback between the acoustic presence of the artist and the microphone.
Freya Hattenberger has also realised the art work Sirene (Sirens) as a spatial video installation.
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Gary Hill: Mediations (towards a remake of Soundings), 1979/1986, 4:45 min
This contribution highlights the loudspeakers rather than the microphone. But also here it is the voice of the artist which makes itself heard: «A voice speaks out. Out loud. A loud speaker.» In a single setting Hill reflects the variable interaction between voice, video image and loudspeaker.
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Marcel Odenbach: As If Memories Could Deceive Me, 1984/86, 17:28 min
Should we mistrust our memories? Marcel Odenbach pursues this line of thought. His associative collage of image and musical references reminds of personal and national identity constructions. A recurrent point of reference is Odenbach's own middle-class childhood. Repeating images of a young boy touching piano keys, recordings of concert performances and film sequences of German history combine to form a flow of moving memories.
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Susan Hefuna: ANA/ICH, 2006, 3:36 min
A film collage with short portrait recordings of people on the streets of Cairo who introduce themselves with «ana», the Arabic word for «I». An unusual, almost alien gesture as the inhabitants of Cairo usually place their own person in the background. The recordings alternate with short audio-visual self projections of the filmmaker. Using the personal pronoun in the first person the relationship to the own language, culture and individuality is questioned and contrasted with ours.
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Franziska Megert: Sweet Dressing, 1983, 3:31 min
A special type of perception study: the visual and noise levels at first appear to be disparate. Only slowly do we identify the covered forms and supposed coordinates of the public and intimate room presented to us. Using a minimum of audio-visual resources Franziska Megert demonstrates an ambiguous situation for the eyes and ears.
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Dara Birnbaum: Fire!Hendrix, 1982, 5:24 min
In her pictorial critique of aesthetic representation strategies Dara Birnbaum takes a look at women, consumption and lifestyle in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In a re-enactment of the Jimmy Hendrix song Fire! image, song and text elements fuse to become a multi-layer ensemble. This enables the artist to successfully de-construct the stereotypes used in advertising with inherent resources of television language. The consumption consumes itself.
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Peter Simon: Echo, 2005, 5:37 min
The camera observes passing groups and individuals as seen from a bird's eye view. The settings are cross-faded with recordings from a cloud chamber. While on the one hand the public space is thereby kept at bay, the camera zooms in to get close to individual persons. The soundtrack composed by Peter Simon supports the images.
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Michael Langoth: Video Skating, 1991, 3 min
The artist whisks us away into the fast-moving audio-visual world of a camera on rollers and runners. Rhythmatised with a succession of erratic sequences, the camera shows audio-visual feats on water, ice and asphalt. Just before we succumb to the suction of the speed, we are released.
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Georg Maas: 10 ¾ Zoll, 1986, 4 min
The video uses documentary image material from work on building sites: sawing, cutting und splitting. The next work steps join, fit and install. The process of dissecting and producing represents an analogy to the video montage which reorganises events in the film and therefore creates an audio-visual orchestra.
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Concept: Renate Buschmann and Stephanie Lauke
Text: Stephanie Lauke
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