Shirazeh’s work for the 55^th Biennale di Venezia, Breath is a collateral event housed in La Torre di Porta Nuova. Built between 1809 and 1814 to enable the mechanical placement of masts onto ships, it is a building of almost ecclesiastically monumental proportions and presence. Breath is a four channel video and sound installation that features soft but captivating voices.

There is one chant for each of four major religious traditions: Buddhist, Christian, Jewish and Islamic. The work’s positioning couldn’t be more fortuitous. The two, looking out together over the water, enhance each other perfectly.

From the outside Breath announces itself as an immense fabric box. Made from black felt, its sides soar upwards as far as the archway it inhabits. Sunlight beams down from above onto its muted surface. At the front there is a shoulder width gap through which it is clear the viewer is invited to enter. Visibility is limited as one passes down a short, narrow passage. There is very little light either natural or artificial, only that which seeps in from outside

Inside is an intimate, square space. As my retinas adjust to near darkness, four small video screens slowly become apparent at eye level. The sound that welcomes me is an enticing, but unclear overlaying of four different incantations. As I approach each screen in turn, one of the four chants becomes more clear, but it is never possible to hear one without registering the other three. The sounds are fused together, inherently inseparable before they reach the ear. The source of the audio is lost somewhere in the darkened space. Do they originate from the ear, the brain, or in the space between the speakers and myself? Like the breath, these sounds are hardly tangible. No sooner are they perceived than they are gone, transformed into something else.

On the screens I see what appear to me as specks of light floating and pulsating in abstract, centrifugal formations. Their movement evokes something of the astronomical realm. It’s almost as though I’m outside the universe looking in, watching it in miniature, expanding and contracting. The spaces between the dashes of light grow larger and then smaller again.

Involuntarily I throw my head back and look up as one might beneath the dome of a cathedral. In the semi-darkness I can’t make out an ending to this temporary vaulted structure. The four black walls fly upwards into an apparent infinity. The space has no edges, as if there were no limit to its bounds.

What I find most compelling is that this work seems to point towards commonality and that energetic oneness that permeates every being, living and nonliving. It is something of a surprise that Shirazeh Houshiary’s Breath should find itself at la Biennale di Venezia—the home of competitive, jingoistic individuation.

So subtle is this work, and so persuasive, that I begin to question the wisdom of the Biennale’s artistic nationalism. At a time when borders are in a constant state of actual, philosophical, and metaphorical transgression, and the transfer of communication and knowledge take place almost exclusively via a rhizomatic hyper-network, the notion of a meaningful space existing for national pavilions begins to seem absurd.

By Beverly Knowles

The post Shirazeh Houshiary’s Breath At the 55th Biennale di Venezia appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

Entering the darkened auditorium of the Park Avenue Armory’s Drill Hall served as a perfect setting for Karlheinz Stockhausen’s OKTOPHONIE. The audience was immediately invited into a mysterious world where the musical and the visual combined to take one on a meditative journey.

As a pioneer of electronic music, a master of sound manipulations, research scientist, and composer, Karlheinz Stockhausen not only pushed the boundaries of sound limits and capabilities, but also invented a new language of musical aesthetic. OKTOPHONIE is a 70 minute electronic piece which is the second act of Dienstag (Tuesday) from a cycle of seven operas titled Licht (Light), each dedicated to a separate day of the week. This work opened Armory’s 2013 season and once again demonstrated the composer’s fascination with spatial movement.

The audience donned white cloaks and took seats in a circle surrounded by 16 speakers positioned in four corners as if to form a cube. Kathinka Pasveer, a sound projectionist and Stockhausen’s long time collaborator, sat in the middle of the audience and controlled the overall dynamic. Eight different layers of music simultaneously moved through the space, creating an octophonic sound. The specific arrangement of the loudspeakers allowed vertical, horizontal, and diagonal movements which were initially composed by Stockhausen himself.

OKTOPHONIE depicted a battle between two opposing forces, the archangel Michael and Lucifer. Rhythmic pulses of whistling, spinning, and crashing sounds alternated with longer lasting layers of sounds; a dark consistent drone being consistent throughout the whole piece. Strangely the musical composition and the complex variety of sounds did not create an immediate emotional reaction, but rather evoked a hypnotizing sense of desolation and stillness. The dark world filled with sonic invasions could be reminiscent of Stockhausen’s childhood experience of being near a battlefield in Germany during World War II. The composer imagined this piece, as with most of his other works, to be listened to in total darkness or with a little source of light, such as the image of a moon projected on the wall.

Image courtesy of Masha Froliak

The mystical spiritual mood of this massive sound composition was aimed at creating a separate dimension of a transcending character. Having no physical connection to sounds the piece was yet set up for the audience to have a strong sensory experience. Depending on where each person was seating the perception of sounds would differ.

Stockhausen is known for his cosmological ideas and interest in universal wanted to expand and train our perceptual senses with his music. The only way to better understand it was to listen.

As the last notes of OKTOPHONIE, which was composed by Stockhausen 23 years ago, filled Armory’s Drill Hall the lights illuminated the stage bringing us back to the worldly reality. The musical spatial journey that tested our perception was also a test for the composer, who died in 2007 without experiencing whether the world was accepting of his work.

By Masha Froliak

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