Galerie Mazzoli is pleased to present
Transmission, the second solo exhibition in its Berlin space by
Christina Kubisch.
For the first time, the artist will present in a gallery a short journey through her entire pioneering research as a sound artist. The exhibition begins with a presentation of the performances from the series
of
1975, and continues with a reproduction of the installation
Il respiro del mare (it.
Breath of the Sea) from 1981, along with a selection of drawings and documents from a few of the artist’s most
significant works from the 1980’s and 1990’s, in particular concerning the
Electrical Walks series. Finally, the journey concludes with the introduction of a new series of prints (
Transitionen)
and, most notably, the brand new large installation Weaving II. While not a full anthological exhibition, the selection of pieces in
Transmission allows the visitor to get a sense about the main
trajectories that Christina Kubisch’s sound work has taken over the years, and about how she came to develop a personal vocabulary which defies categorization into a specific artistic current.
With regards to Kubisch‘s sonic arts endeavors, music is most certainly a permanent catalyst. This is less obvious than it may seem: although reflections on the concept of music—on what music was, what
was its social impact, and what it meant to make it and perform it—were not uncommon among composers following from the tradition of the likes of John Cage or Pierre Schaeffer, they were indeed unusual, if
not unheard of, in the field of visual arts. Kubisch was among the first to pursue the translation of a common compositional attitude into a visual phenomenon.
Emergency Solos, for example, one of her first and
most characteristic performance series, cannot simply be heard, but requires to be seen in order to be understood.
Emergency Solos seems to arise from the necessity to expose the tension between a female musician and his/her instrument, particularly in the challenging context of a performance.
This is almost too clearly epitomized—not without a good deal o irony—by the performance
Break, in which Kubisch appears performing the flute with her hands covered bfy boxing gloves. In
Weekend,
as a further example, the performance instructions require the flute to be played “wrongly”—i.e., blowing into the instrument’s body, as opposed to its mouthpiece—through a gas mask. The instructions
continue requiring the performer to play his/herself to exhaustion, symbolizing the musician’s necessity to keep playing at all costs, even in extreme conditions.
During the 1980’s, as a personal choice, Kubisch moved gradually away from performances and started to produce installations, in particular ones that involved electromagnetic induction as a form of
sound carrying technology. From this point on, producing objects that revealed the presence of sounds—rather than the other way around—became a determinant in Kubisch’s creative process.
The installations
Il respiro del mare, from 1981, and
Weaving II, from 2021, are respectively the oldest and the most recent of Kubisch’s pieces relying on electromagnetic induction and arranged cables.
Il respiro
del mare consists of two identical shapes—resembling stylized labyrinths—formed by cables attached to the wall.
Weaving II consists of an old weaving loom, upon which copper cables have been laid so
to substitute for the usual textile fabric. If the visitors approach the installations without the necessary equipment, they are completely silent. Indeed, a particular device—a box in the former case, a pair of
headphones in the latter, most recent work—work—fitted with copper coils, electronic circuits and a small speaker, is necessary to decode the sound waves traveling through the cable, so that they can be
transformed into audible sound. By moving the devices close to the cables, the visitor can hear the sounds that are “hidden” inside them, coming from the devices themselves. The closer the devices are to the
cable, the louder the sounds. As the visitor moves around the room and around the installations, he/she moves through different sounds and different combinations thereof.
In general, Kubisch’s induction-based installations explore the theme of hidden phenomena by exposing sounds concealed within objects. By doing this, Kubisch changes our perception of space, of form, and
of time. Thanks to the sounds the pieces extend their reach into the depths of the surroundings, and what can initially appear as a largely empty space suddenly becomes a saturated environment. Similarly, our
perception of the objects’ aspect changes as we are invited to move closer and further from the cable—in a constant zoom-in/zoom-out motion—in order to activate different sounds and volumes. Finally, seemingly
stylized still-lives, motionless objects, are brought to life and transformed into time-based pieces through their sonic variations, pushing the audience into a time dimension that is no longer that of the outside
world, but that of the composition.
In Kubisch’s installations the concept of music also plays an important role. Because of the necessity of handheld devices for sound productions, and because of the visitor’s ability to modify the sound by way
of moving around the boxes/headphones, the installation becomes,
de facto, a musical instrument. A peculiar one, however, because the performer-visitor cannot change the electronic composition within the cable,
but only its loudness and the way the different sounds coming from the shapes, and therefore from the boxes, are mixed. Differently from her 1970’s performances, then, Kubisch regains control of the compositional
aspect. Like a traditional composer she makes the music she wants us to hear. Unlike a traditional composer, however, she allows us to control how we hear it. In this way she makes us specifically aware that as
listeners we can always be active despite what we may think, and that the possibility for a musician to control exactly what the audience is going to hear is a mere illusion. Indeed, if we move around any sort of
musical utterance, if we get closer or farther from the instrument playing, we actively change the way the sound reaches our ears. With this awareness we realize that Kubisch is not concerned to show us that
any sound can be music, but that any sound depends on the listener‘s behavior in order to become music.
The basic tenets of Kubisch’s art—the translation of hidden phenomena into perceptible ones, the intercommunication between different techniques and processes, the interchange between the artist
and the public, the focus on music as language and as social phenomenon, the broadcasting of electromagnetic waves—are all summarized by the title of the exhibition. The word “Transmission” itself
incorporates several meanings and entails different possibilities of interpretation. Through
Transmission it is possible to enter the world of Christina Kubisch, follow the evolution of her work and career,
and grasp the importance of her research in the ever-growing field of interdisciplinary arts. Kubisch, who was a student in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s,, initially displayed an evident connection to the
main artistic currents and critical theories of that time. Indeterminacy, participation of the audience to the creative process, the author’s inability to control the audience’s understanding of his/her work, are
all elements that young Kubisch embraced and used as ground upon which to build her language. However, by refusing to adhere to a specific movement, or to engage a single artistic practice, the German
artist was able to rapidly develop her own particular voice. Blending ideas that span from the Wagnerian
Gesamtkunstwerk to Umberto Eco’s
Opera Aperta, and drawing inspiration from the most diverse artists,
she successfully created music to be seen and art to be heard. Indeed, Christina Kubisch’s work contributed to the beginning of an interdisciplinary attitude towards sound-based art making that paved the
wave for generations of artists to follow, and represents an essential part of the history of what we now call “sound art.”
Catalogo disponibile.
