Peter Ablinger 'A Letter from Schoenberg', Reading Piece with Player Piano, Foto: Siegrid Ablinger / courtesy Haus am Waldsee
Tom felber for creative face Magazine
"Sounds are not sounds! They are here to distract the intellect and to soothe the senses. Not once is hearing 'hearing': hearing is that which creates me." (Peter Ablinger)
From June 21 until August 3, 2008 Haus am Waldsee presents Peter Ablinger "Hearing Listening" and paintings by Daniel Biesold. The exhibition "Hearing Listening" introduces the Austrian composer and sound artist Peter Ablinger for the first time in an artistic context and offers insight into his complete works from 1992 to 2008. His works will be accompanied by several paintings by Leipzig born Daniel Biesold who lives in Berlin. The work of Peter Ablinger, born in 1959, deals with the relationship of the sound event and its interface between mimesis and noise. The spatial context refers to listening in the sense of acoustic photography. Visitors find a wide range of acoustic pieces from the cycle "WEISS/WEISSLICH" (White/Whitish) by Peter Ablinger - from small to big, from gentle to loud. All these works have in common that they are exhibited as well as released for the audience to use. They become a composition in the moment the audience uses them and the composition lasts as long as the audience uses the works.
The installation "3 snail shells in E-major" shows 3 snail houses of different size, each placed on a white cube. The peculiarity of "3 snail shells in E-major" is that an E-major chord emerges within the (white) noise, if one holds the three snail houses to the ear in the order of sequence. At the upper floor of the building the audience listens to the projection of the 5 vowels as very soft coloured static noises from loudspeakers in 5 different rooms.
With „A letter from Schoenberg" Ablinger spectacularly conjures up the spirit of Arnold Schönberg's voice with a computer operated piano. The piano imitates the human voice and at the same time operates as an alienated recording and reproducing device. While the audience listens to the piano they read the letter Schoenberg wrote with high emotions.
Outside the house, acoustic pieces from the cycle "WEISS/WEISSLICH" (White/Whitish) will be heard too. Wearing headphones with built-in microphones, visitors will acoustically experience their environment in a new way. For example the sound installation „Reed, Wind". Or „White Laundry", an installation made of rods, clothesline and linen sheets. Like many other works by Ablinger this piece begins when it is used; in this case: walking and listening. The situation is one which reduces seeing to a large extend and turns our senses towards the inside. The labyrinthine form, too, points us to the inner ear.
In this exhibition, the Peter Ablinger's work meets the white paintings by Daniel Biesold. Born in Leipzig in 1964, Biesold studied in Hamburg and Frankfurt. Just like Ablinger, Biesold is a fervent admirer of the minimalist painter Agnes Martin (1912-2004). Both name the great American as a decisive point of reference for their work. The exhibition becomes an experiment consisting of the encounter of the visual composer and the acoustic painter. (tf)
