Dead Plants and Living Objects
Sound installation/concert
+MSUM, Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Maistrova 3, 1000 Ljubljana
Within a short tour through Belgium, Switzerland and Italy, the project Dead Plants and Living Objects, will be for the first time presented in Slovenia by sound artist Rie Nakajima and Pierre Berthet.
Cans, whistles, springs, porcelain bowls, compressors, bells, ping pong balls, dry leaves of agave, scouring pads, steel wire, twigs, paper and aluminum foil, plastic bags, pink gloves, piano, balloons, cans, feathers, water, miscellaneous scrap, gravel, flower pots, guitar, metal pipes, seed beads, bamboo sticks, bones, stones are some objects from which Rie Nakajima and Pierre Berthet creates vibrating sounds so that their acoustic shadows dance around invisible air volumes that reshape constantly and move in the space.
Organizacija: KUD Mreža in collaboration with Moderna galerija.
Supported by: Republic of Slovenia - Ministry of Culture, City of Ljubljana - Department for Culture, Foundation Wallonie-Bruxelles International
Rie Nakajima (1976, Yokohama/London) is a Japanese artist working with installations and performances that produce sound. Her works are most often composed in direct response to unique architectural spaces using a combination of kinetic devices and found objects. She has exhibited and performed widely both in the UK and overseas and has produced 'Sculpture' with David Toop since 2013. With Keiko Yamamoto she has a music project 'O YAMA O' which explores music with no genre. She frequently collaborates with David Cunningham, Miki Yui, Pierre Berthet, Guy De Bièvre in the crossing area of art and music. She has performed with Angharad Davies, Clive Bell, Johan Vandermaelen, Lee Patterson, Shuichi Chino, Akira Sakata, Daichi Yoshikawa, Junko Wada, Lau Nau, Akio Suzuki, Phill Niblock and many others. She is from Yokohama and based in London.
Pierre Berthlet (1958, Liège)studied percussion at Brussels Conservatory and spent a lot of times in a bell tower, learning carillon and listening to the sounds in the eighties. Studying with Garrett List (improvisation), Frederic Rzewski (composition) and Henri Pousseur (music theory) at Liège Conservatory in the nineties encouraged him to continue various things he did since his early childhood like throwing objects on the ground, shake them, hit them, caress them to hear what sounds come out of them. Sounds of water drops falling on various materials always interested him a lot. Slowly slowly he started to prolonged various objects and instruments with long steel wires connected to can resonators suspended in space, probably influenced by the works of people like Alvin Lucier, Terry Fox, Paul Panhuysen...Learned a lot also by playing several years with Arnold Dreyblatt's Orchestra of Exited Strings and also by dueting with Frederic Le Junter. Since the nineties, he realizes and exhibits indoor and outdoor sound and visual installations. Adapted to the place where they are exhibited, they are also materials for live performances. In 2010, he started to perform a piece by Tom Johnson for 5 sounding pendulums «Galileo» In 2012, he started to shake dead plants mechanically. Thanks to Rie Nakajima, he discovered the use of batteries so that the motors, free from cables not only shake the plants but move them in space (auto-mobiles). Since 2013, he plays with she as a duet, the name of their project is «Dead Plants and Moving Objects»
Pierre Berthet and Rie Nakajima, Rumsteek, Brussels, 07 February 2016 from rn on Vimeo.
