Selected Press - Galerie Chantal Crousel · 2017-02-04 · Selected Press. Galerie Canal Crouel Azimi oana Galerie Canal Crouel Pari and Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla Le

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Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla

Selected Press

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Azimi, Roxana. « Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris – Stand L13. Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla », Le Quotidien de l’Art, Special Issue, December 2016, p.5.

LE QUOTIDIEN DE L’ART | DECEMBER 2016 SPECIAL ISSUEKABINETT

Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris – Stand L13

Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla

BY ROXANA AZIMI

Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla may have represented the USA at the Venice Biennale in 2011, but the artist duo are still deeply attached to Puerto Rico, a territory whose hybrid nature comes from the fact it is an American territory, but an unincorporated one, i.e. not a fully-fledged state. Recently they caused a sensation by installing a Dan Flavin neon in a grotto on the Caribbean island, a project produced by the Dia Art Foundation in New York, despite the refusal of the American minimalist artist’s estate. Puerto Rico is also at the origin of their taste for engraving in every size, shape and color. Since the middle of the 20th century, the island has boasted a rich tradition of revolutionary, avant-garde engravings: a tradition that Allora and Calzadilla add to using new technologies, graphics software and images they find on Internet. Like their predecessors, they imbue this centuries-long practice with a political dimension. The woodcuts that Galerie Chantal Crousel is presenting at Art Basel Miami Beach are entitled Dust Storm. They are made from images of a stranded American army base in Afghanistan, covered in sand pushed by strong winds: a metaphor for America’s foreign policy in the Middle East that seems stuck in the doldrums. l

Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla, Dust Storm I, II, III, 2016, hand made prints from wood template (ink on

linen). Courtesy of the artist and Galerie

Chantal Crousel, Paris.

Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla, Dust Storm I, II, III, 2016, hand made prints from wood template (ink on

linen). Courtesy of the artist and Galerie

Chantal Crousel, Paris.

PAGE 05

Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla1971 Birth of Guillermo Calzadilla in Havana, Cuba 1974 Birth of Jennifer Allora in Philadelphia, USA 1995 The duo began working together 2011 They represented the USA at the Venice Biennale

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“Art Gallery of Alberta exhibition Allora & Calzadilla: Echo to Artifact reverberates with aural animation”.

Enbridge, July 12, 2016.

http://www.enbridge.com/stories/2016/july/art-gallery-of-alberta-allora-calzadilla

Art Gallery of Alberta exhibition Allora & Calzadilla: Echo to Artifact reverberates with aural animationIt’s a blast from the past, in the form of a sonic boom.

Exploring sound, music and voice, internationally acclaimed artists Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla are bringing Western Canada’s prehistory to life at the Art Gallery of Alberta.

Allora & Calzadilla: Echo to Artifact, an exhibition presented by Enbridge through Aug. 28, includes dinosaur bones, the oldest musical instrument ever discovered, and a chunk of the Earth’s crust that’s estimated to be four billion years old.

Allora & Calzadilla: Echo to Artifact is based partially on a research trip that the two Puerto Rico-based artists made to Alberta and B.C. in 2014, visiting the Burgess Shale fossil site and the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology—and reverberates with life and aural animation.

“They knew that Western Canada had all of these incredible geological resources, and they were very interested in making prehistory resonate today,” says Catherine Crowston, executive director and chief curator at the Edmonton-based AGA.

Allora & Calzadilla: Echo to Artifact includes a sculptural installation, a live vocal performance, a trio of films exploring the musical resonance of historical artifacts, and a video installation. “Part of the exhibition deals with early humanity,” notes Crowston, “and explores how we, as humans living in the 21st century, can link back to those ancestors from long ago—through voice, our need to communicate and socialize, and our creation of art and music.”X-Stream Science BRWA

Enbridge exists to fuel quality of life, and we’re committed to enriching lives in the communities near our projects and operations through cultural experiences. Since 2010, Enbridge has been a presenting sponsor for more than a dozen AGA exhibits—including Allora & Calzadilla: Echo to Artifact and The Edge: The Abstract and the Avant Garde in Canada, scheduled to open in early October.

“We’re proud to partner with the Art Gallery of Alberta, because we recognize the importance of art in forming—and informing—the community and building culture,” says Leon Zupan, Enbridge’s Edmonton-based chief operating officer and a member of the AGA’s board of directors.

“We know the AGA is the torch-bearer for outstanding, challenging and thought-provoking exhibitions of modern

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“Art Gallery of Alberta exhibition Allora & Calzadilla: Echo to Artifact reverberates with aural animation”.

Enbridge, July 12, 2016.

http://www.enbridge.com/stories/2016/july/art-gallery-of-alberta-allora-calzadilla

and contemporary Canadian art,” he adds. “Through our partnership with the AGA, we hope to play a role in the preservation and promotion of Canadian art, and help sustain Canadian heritage and identity.”

Crowston worked with Allora and Calzadilla—a married couple whose collaboration dates back to 1995—for two years on this current exhibition, and says Echo to Artifact is the product of two distinctive artistic approaches.

“The artists are systematic, almost scientific, in their research. But there is also a sense of poetry in the work,” she says. “Between the intellectual rigor and the poetry, the two work really well together.”

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Benhamou, Judith. “A l’abbaye de Royaumont les très talentueux artistes américains : Allora &Calzadilla”. Les Echos.fr, May 27, 2016.http://blogs.lesechos.fr/judith-benhamou-huet/a-l-abbaye-de-royaumont-les-tres-talentueux-artistes-americains-a15839.html

Il y a un point commun entre le vin et l’art. Dans les pays de tradition viticole comme la France le vin considéré comme le meilleur est long en bouche autrement dit on comprend et apprécie son contenu dans un temps étendu. A contrario le vin américain, même le meilleur, est court en bouche : il délivre sa saveur d’un seul coup. Il en va de même pour l’art. Les artistes américains contemporains sont généralement appréciés pour la force de leur impact visuel immédiat. Il existe cependant au moins une exception au phénomène.

Jennifer Allora ( née en 1974) & Guillermo Calzadilla ( né en 1971)sont parmi les artistes les plus talen-tueux actuels de la scène américaine. Ils ont un discours souvent politique et en effet leurs créations n’ont pas toujours un impact visuel immédiat. Cela dit c’est ce couple qui vit à Porto-Rico – un territoire au système hybride dont les habitants n’ont même pas le droit de voter pour les élections du président des Etats-Unis- qui a été choisi pour représenter les Etats-Unis à la Biennale de Venise en 2011 avec l’assenti-ment de la secrétaire d’Etat de l’époque, Hillary Clinton. Leur intervention a marqué les mémoires. Surtout avec cette installation devant le pavillon américain qui consistait en un véritable athlète qui courait sur une machine de sport posée sur un gigantesque char d’assaut.Un résumé de l’esprit américain.https://youtu.be/SgK8_YBy8N0

« Puisque l’esprit de la Biennale correspond d’une certaine manière à celle des jeux olympiques de l’art nous avions décidé d’employer une personne familière de l’exercice qui consiste à représenter le pays dans la compétition» explique Jennifer Allora à propos du sportif.Jennifer Allora est de passage à Paris à l’occasion de l’intervention du couple d’artistes à l’abbaye de

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Benhamou, Judith. “A l’abbaye de Royaumont les très talentueux artistes américains : Allora &Calzadilla”. Les Echos.fr, May 27, 2016.http://blogs.lesechos.fr/judith-benhamou-huet/a-l-abbaye-de-royaumont-les-tres-talentueux-artistes-americains-a15839.html

Royaumont jusqu’au 10 juin à une trentaine de kilomètres de Paris dans cet ancien monastère cistercien vieux de près de 800 ans qui les a sollicité pour une série d’installations et de films.

A L’abbaye de Royaumont le propos est moins abrupte qu’en 2011. Pas de discours politique ouvert. Il est question d’oiseau, de poésie, de sculptures anciennes et de musiques sur un instrument archaïque. Le titre de l’exposition est «Split the lark» pour «Fends l’alouette». Une phrase énigmatique tirée d’un poème d’Emily Dickinson de 1864 : ‘‘ Fends l’Alouette - tu trouveras la Musique - Enroulée pelure après pelure en bulbes d’Argent»...

« C’était une nécessité de devenir plus opaque. Aujourd’hui les media classent les artistes dans des cases et on n’a pas envie de rentrer dans telle ou telle catégorie. Nous voulons montrer l’étendue de nos intérêts. » justifie Jennifer Allora.

Enfin Jennifer aborde volontairement le sujet d’une pièce qui a créé une polémique forte aux Etats -Unis : « Portorican light » située à Porto Rico et commandée par la fameuse Dia Foundation. L’œuvre est en place jusqu’au 23 septembre 2017.

« Philippe Vergne du temps où il était encore à la tête de la Dia foundation nous a commandé une pièce destinée à être placée en dehors de la Dia Beacon. Depuis Beuys dans les années 80 rien n’avait été fait «off site» à la Dia.En 1965 l’artiste minimal Dans Flavin avait nommé une de ses pièces en néon « Portorican Light. Dedica-ted to Jenny Black ». On a cherché cette dame à laquelle était dédiée la pièce, une ancienne assistante de la galerie où il exposait. Désormais elle avait un bed & breakfast à Long Island. Elle nous a raconté que lorsqu’il avait installé les néons elle s’était exclamée « ca fait très portoricain ». Un propos stéréotypé sur un territoire qui avait vu une main d’œuvre bon marché partir en masse à New York. Nous avons décidé d’apporter cette « Portorican Light » dans une grotte de Porto Rico. La Dia en la personne de Philippe Vergne a joué le jeu. Il a fallu un an pour régler l’humidité constante dans ce lieu qui se situe au milieu d’une réserve naturelle. Les néons sont alimentés par un système de panneaux solaires. C’est le soleil de Porto Rico qui nourrit la « Portorican light ». L’estate de Dan Flavin en la personne de son fils Steven n’approuve pas cette idée. Nous ne sommes pas autorisé à photographier l’œuvre dans la grotte. »

Pour arriver à la grotte il faut le mériter : deux heures de voiture depuis la capitale San José puis une heure de marche dans la réserve naturelle après être passé par des sites industriels désaffectés qui ressemblent aux sites affectionnés par le couple de photographes allemand Berndt et Hilla Becher.Seulement six personnes par jour sont autorisées à faire l’excursion.

« C’est comme un pèlerinage. Nous voulons que l’expérience reste intime »explique Jennifer.L’œuvre rappelle le principe de l’installation de Flavin dans un des espaces de la Dia à Bridgehampton dans une maison en bois qui ressemble à une chapelle. Une expression mystique sans dieu.

Le travail d’Allora & Calzadilla mérite la méditation et la profondeur d’analyse. Un antidote à l’esprit de l’époque, malade de sa superficialité. Pas le temps... D’ailleurs bravo si vous êtes allé jusqu’à la fin de cet article.

https://www.royaumont.com

Copyright photos : Allora &Calzadilla, Galerie Chantal Crousel.

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“Le top 5 des expos de la semaine”. Les Inrocks, Friday, May 20, 2016.

http://abonnes.lesinrocks.com/2016/05/20/arts/top-5-expos-de-semaine-35-5-11829343/

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Benhamou-Huet, Judith. “Allora & Calzadilla: The most talented American artists of their generation are sparking controversy”.

Judith Benhamou-Huet Reports, May 26, 2016.

http://judithbenhamouhuet.com/report/allora-calzadilla-sparking-controversy/

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“Allora et Calzadilla dans l’épaisseur du temps”. ArtAujourd’hui.Hebdo, n° 426, April 7-13, 2016.http://www.artaujourdhui.info/art-aujourdhui-hebdo-article-21297-allora-et-calzadilla-dans-l-

epaisseur-du-temps.html

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Arthur Mourichon. «Exposition « Split the Lark » du 2 avril au 10 juin 2016 à l’Abbaye de Royaumont», Telif TV, March 24, 2016.

http://95.telif.tv/2016/03/24/exposition-split-the-lark-du-2-avril-au-10-juin-2016-a-labbaye-de-royau-mont/

Exposition « Split the Lark » du 2 avril au 10 juin 2016 à l’Abbaye de Royaumont

Par Arthur Mourichon le 24 mars 2016

La Fondation Royaumont présente les œuvres des artistes Jennifer Allora et Guillermo Calzadilla lors de l’Exposition « Split the Lark » du 2 avril au 10 juin 2016, en partenariat avec la galerie Chantal Crousel, à Asnières-sur-Oise.

Abbaye de Royaumont

Dans le contexte particulier des travaux de restauration du bâtiment des moines de l’Abbaye de Royaumont, les artistes Jennifer Allora et Guillermo Calzadilla témoignent de la sonorité du lieu et de la résonance des vestiges à travers leur exposition « Split the Lark ».

Commandé spécialement pour cette exposition, l’Abbaye de Royaumont ouvre la visite à travers l’édifice médiéval. Cette exposition fait écho à l’esprit de transformation qui anime actuellement Royaumont. L’Abbaye fait en effet l’objet d’un programme de restauration et de valorisation du patrimoine architectural, d’aménagement et de rénovation de l’équipement résidentiel sans précédent.

Ce chantier, qui a conduit la Fondation à réduire ses activités résidentielles pendant 6 mois, permet d’offrir aux artistes des espaces normalement fermés au public, y compris un spectaculaire échafaudage couvrant la façade de l’abbaye. « Split the Lark » constituera la première étape de la réouverture au public de l’abbaye, avant sa réouverture complète le 2 juillet 2016 avec l’inauguration d’une nouvelle collection de plantes pour son jardin d’inspiration médiévale, sur le thème « Entre Orient et Occident, le voyage des plantes au Moyen-Age ».

Abbaye de Royaumont

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Frank Expósito. « Allora & Calzadilla », artforum.com, September 22, 2015.http://www.artforum.com/words/id=55065

Allora & Calzadilla

Artist duo Allora & Calzadilla’s latest project, Puerto Rican Light (Cueva Vientos), 2015, is the Dia Art Foundation’s first commission outside the continental United States since 1982. Here, the artists speak about the work, which incorporates one of Dan Flavin’s multicolored light sculptures and sets it in a prehistoric limestone cave located between the municipalities of Guayanilla and Peñuelas in Puerto Rico. The piece will be on view starting September 23, 2015.

THIS PROJECT BEGAN years ago when we first encountered Dan Flavin’s Puerto Rican Light (to Jeanie Blake) from 1965 in an art history book. We became interested in the conditions and possibilities of Flavin’s work; how the light fixtures need to be plugged into the wall of the space where they are on display, and how by doing so, they involve a larger network of power and electricity—an infrastructural grid that supports the place where the work is shown. For us, these conditions immediately opened up questions about the autonomy of the work versus its dependency on other material factors.

In order to get to Puerto Rican Light (Cueva Vientos), one has to drive along the southwest coast of the island and pass a large petrochemical complex that has been abandoned since the 1970s. It now stands as a modern ruin—polluting and haunting the landscape. Cueva Vientos, a few miles down the road, is part of a natural protected area conserving multiple species of endemic flora and fauna. The mouth of the cave where we installed Flavin’s work is nearly two hundred feet tall, and the domed vault where the work is installed is about 250 feet at its highest point. The eight-foot-tall vertical shafts of fluores-cent light, however, are not diminished by the grandeur of the space; rather, they charge the immense volume with their magnificent glow. At the top of the dome are two openings. At noon, the sunlight comes through them and hits the ground close to the Flavin sculpture, slowly moving like a sundial around the floor and the walls in a play of light. Sunlight—the primary material of our work, which we collect through solar panels outside the cave and use to power the Flavin sculpture—dances around

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Frank Expósito. « Allora & Calzadilla », artforum.com, September 22, 2015.http://www.artforum.com/words/id=55065

the glowing fluorescent lamps. Then, around 3:00 PM, the sun seeps in from the entrance of the cave. Shadows come in long over the floor. Variations of natural light, in contrast with the fluorescent lamps, alternately reveal different aspects of the cave’s stalactites, the walls, and its bats—making the space and its inhabitants comprehensible.

We’re using the original work by Flavin and showing it in a new context, as opposed to making a copy or replica of it. This is a historic object that we’re consciously presenting and protecting in a new context. We’re not appropriating it. Rather, in effect, we’re aligning the histories of the work and the site. During the period when the Flavin piece was made, Puerto Rico was being heavily industrialized as a result of a US government economic development initiative called Operation Bootstrap. Apart from bringing US corporations to Puerto Rico to enjoy lucrative tax benefits, the program also pro-moted the emigration of island residents stateside. By the mid-1960s, nearly a million people had left the island, and a great majority of them settled in New York City. The title of Flavin’s work, Puerto Ri-can Light (to Jeanie Blake), was actually inspired by a comment from Blake, who worked as an assis-tant at Flavin’s New York gallery at the time, after she’d attended a Puerto Rican Day parade—which was a fairly new expression of island cultural identity in the city. This colorful event seems to have left an impression and somehow Flavin’s three colored fluorescent lights triggered Blake’s chain of associa-tions. For us, a larger set of relationships—related to the social, cultural, and political transformations that were happening in that period and are ongoing today—can enter that train of thought.

Our work ultimately is about trying to render physical the words Puerto Rican Light. For instance, the current Puerto Rican debt crisis mainly stems from the country’s largest electric company. There are energy transfers that occur within the photovoltaic cells of the solar panels and within the fluorescent lamps as well as within the ecosystem of the cave itself. Flavin’s piece is traditionally perceived as dependent on the institutional setting or white cube. Here, we are opening that gap between object and setting, examining their reciprocal influence, and exploring the overlapping of the prehistoric and the contemporary.

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Gareth Harris. «Dan Flavin light piece to be installed deep inside a Puerto Rican cave», The Art Newspaper, September 10, 2015.

http://theartnewspaper.com/news/158954/

Dan Flavin light piece to be installed deep inside a Puerto Rican cave

Dia Art Foundation heads overseas with a major—and potentially controversial—new work by Allora and Calzadilla

The high-profile artist duo Allora and Calzadilla, who represented the US at the 2011 Venice Biennale, will unveil later this month one of their most ambitious and audacious works off Puerto Rico’s sou-thwest coast.

The pair have installed a work by Dan Flavin—Puerto Rican Light (to Jeanie Blake), 1965—deep inside a natural limestone cave located in a remote conservation area on the Caribbean island between the municipalities of Guayanilla and Peñuelas. Solar panels at the mouth of the cave will power Fla-vin’s work, which is made from pink, yellow and red fluorescent lightbulbs.

The piece was commissioned by the New York-based Dia Art Foundation—known for its pivotal land art projects such as Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty in Utah (1970)—and Para la Naturaleza, the non-profit unit of the Conservation Trust of Puerto Rico. Funders include the Puerto Rico-based philanthro-pists Robert and Encarnita Valdes Quinlan and the New Jersey-based Teiger Foundation.

Allora and Calzadilla’s installation, entitled Puerto Rican Light (Cueva Vientos), launches on 23 Sep-tember; it will be publicly accessible for two years (until 23 September 2017) with visits scheduled for parties of up to six people. The hike to the cave will last around two hours, the organisers say.

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Gareth Harris. «Dan Flavin light piece to be installed deep inside a Puerto Rican cave», The Art Newspaper, September 10, 2015.

http://theartnewspaper.com/news/158954/

Last year, however, the New York Times reported that the Flavin estate had not authorised the use of the late Minimalist’s work. A spokeswoman for David Zwirner gallery in New York, which represents the Flavin estate, says that this remains the case.

“Dia has a difference of opinion with the Flavin estate [regarding the new commission]. But in general, Dia has a very good relationship with the Flavin estate,” says a spokesman for the Dia Art Foundation. He adds that a new Flavin installation is due to launch at Dia:Beacon in the Hudson Valley in October.

The work in Puerto Rico has been several years in the planning. “As with most Dia projects, realising the work over a period of time is an integral part of the process,” says Jessica Morgan, the director of the Dia Art Foundation. The piece is the foundation’s first long-term installation commissioned outside the US since Joseph Beuys's 7000 Eichen (7000 Oaks) in Kassel, Germany, in 1982. “We could poten-tially do more abroad,” Morgan says.

Guillermo Calzadilla says in a statement that the project “presents a dense interweaving of inter-genera-tional art-historical exchange and postcolonial geographical dislocation”. Previous iterations of Puerto Rican Light were shown at the Americas Society in New York and London’s Tate Modern in 2003.

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Elisabeth Perez-Luna. «‘Intervals’ challenges visitors to consider what happened in between», NewsWorks, March 31, 2015.

http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/local/arts-culture/80186-intervals-challenges-visitors-to-consi-der-what-happened-in-between

Intervals’ challenges visitors to consider what happe-ned in between

Allora & Calzadilla: Intervals : Nothing prepares the visitor for the exhibition ‘Intervals’ by conceptual artists Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla. Inside the dark gallery at the Perelman building, groups of musicians stand at each side of the room, instru-ments in hand. A wall-size video starts playing, and members of the band Relache play. (Courtesy of Friday Arts)

Experimental, Puerto Rico-based artists Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla like to explore the spaces between the past and the present though unusual objects and found moments in history. Their projects usually start with little-known facts that lead them to explore intersecting points between art , science music, time and space.

Their show «Intervals,» at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Fabric Workshop and Museum both through Sun-day, is a sort of retrospective.

As you enter a dark gallery at the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Perelman building, a large video displays the face of a well-groomed man walking slowly among preserved African animals — zebras, monkeys, tapirs, elephants, lions. He is wandering the old storage basement of the Museum of Natural History in Paris. Then, the deep guttural song he was was humming all along becomes more insistent as live musicians, from the group Relache, follow the eerie journey. The song, interpreted by Tim Storms who is credited as the singer with the deepest voice in the world, was composed in honor of two real elephants first exhibited at a private zoo in Paris during the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century. As a populist gesture, the zoo was opened to the public and the animals were «liberated.»

That time of artistic, intellectual and political effervescence interested Jennifer Allora.

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Allora & Calzadilla: Intervals : In the video, singer Tim Storms, a man credited with having the lowest recorded voice in the world, walks through the basement of the science museum in Paris filled with the remains of stuffed exotic animals, singing ‘A Concert for Elephants.’ (Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art)

It coincided «with the moment where there were these questions about what constitutes life itself, what is the bounda-ry between human and nonhuman in the context of revolution, slavery, captivity,» she said. «That’s why it’s important he sings to the remains and not a live modern elephant.»

These seemingly disparate connections and explorations at the core of Allora and Calzadilla’s work are based on the fundamental question of «Who are we?» says Carlos Basualdo, curator of contemporary work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

«The very simple question of who we are is constantly in our minds, not only as individuals but also as a species, and what is it that makes us human,» said Basualdo. «So now anthropologists are saying that maybe what makes us human is that we make art.» «Intervals» tries to explore that question. If you think singing to old elephant’s bones is somewhat esoteric, wait until Calzadilla tells you about another project. It started serendipitously with the discovery of an ancient flute that had been carved from the bone of a griffon vulture.

«The work consisted not only in discovering the object itself because it was a musical instrument, but to discover the sound that this object made and early modern humans heard 40,000 years ago -- and to do it in the presence of a living griffon vulture, a descendant from the bone,» he said.

In the video, you see the enormous vulture being serenaded with the sound made from its ancestor’s bone. «There’s this dialogue going on between the flutist and what she’s doing and the reaction of this living animal who is in some way responding to this experiment,» Allora said.

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Allora & Calzadilla: Intervals : A Concert for Elephants,’ sung by Tim Storms, is composed for elephants in a range only they can hear and is ‘adapted’ for human ears. (Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art)

Allora & Calzadilla: Intervals : In one of Allora and Calzadilla most striking works, a musician plays one of the oldest instruments discovered, a 35,000-year-old flute made from the hollow bone of a Griffin vulture. (Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art)

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Allora & Calzadilla: Intervals : In one of Allora and Calzadilla most striking works, a musician plays one of the oldest instruments discovered, a 35,000-year-old flute made from the hollow bone of a Griffin vulture. (Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art)

«Intervals» is filled with surprises. As you move from one video room to another, many of the visitors surrounding you suddenly break into song as they walk. They’re members of the choral group The Crossing.

At the Fabric Workshop, the exhibition is designed around three floors starting with a mysterious, small, prehistoric rock hanging from a string as a sort of pendulum. It comes to life, when singers use their breath to move it.

In the long run, Allora wants us to think «about how knowledge is formed in general and to understand that though time it is a result of a series of decisions that humans have made, that knowledge as we have it today has been fixed.

«Art is maybe a way to unhinge those fixed connections that determine how we see the world and rediscover the paths that maybe were lost along the way,» she said.

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Ted Chiang. «Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla - The Great Silence», E-Flux, May 8, 2015. http://supercommunity.e-flux.com/texts/the-great-silence/

Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla

e-flux journal 56th Venice Biennale

THE GREAT SILENCE

The humans use Arecibo to look for extraterrestrial intelligence. Their desire to make a connection is so strong that they’ve created an ear capable of hearing across the universe.

But I and my fellow parrots are right here. Why aren’t they interested in listening to our voices?

We’re a non-human species capable of communicating with them. Aren’t we exactly what humans are looking for?

*

The universe is so vast that intelligent life must surely have arisen many times. The universe is also so old that even one technological species would have had time to expand and fill the galaxy. Yet there is no sign of life anywhere except on Earth. Humans call this the Fermi paradox.

One proposed solution to the Fermi paradox is that intelligent species actively try to conceal their presence, to avoid being targeted by hostile invaders.

Speaking as a member of a species that has been driven nearly to extinction by humans, I can attest that this is a wise strategy.

It makes sense to remain quiet and avoid attracting attention.

*The Fermi paradox is sometimes known as the Great Silence. The universe ought to be a cacophony of voices, but instead it’s disconcertingly quiet.

Some humans theorize that intelligent species go extinct before they can expand into outer space. If they’re correct, then the hush of the night sky is the silence of a graveyard.

Hundreds of years ago, my kind was so plentiful that the Rio Abajo forest resounded with our voices. Now we’re almost gone. Soon this rainforest may be as silent as the rest of the universe.

*

There was an African Grey Parrot named Alex. He was famous for his cognitive abilities. Famous among humans, that is.

A human researcher named Irene Pepperberg spent thirty years studying Alex. She found that not only did Alex know the words for shapes and colors, he actually understood the concepts of shape and color.

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THE GREAT SILENCE

Many scientists were skeptical that a bird could grasp abstract concepts. Humans like to think they’re unique. But eventually Pepperberg convinced them that Alex wasn’t just repeating words, that he understood what he was saying.

Out of all my cousins, Alex was the one who came closest to being taken seriously as a communication par-tner by humans.

Alex died suddenly, when he was still relatively young. The evening before he died, Alex said to Pepperberg, “You be good. I love you.”

If humans are looking for a connection with a non-human intelligence, what more can they ask for than that?

*

*

Parrots are vocal learners: we can learn to make new sounds after we’ve heard them. It’s an ability that few animals possess. A dog may understand dozens of commands, but it will never do anything but bark.

Humans are vocal learners, too. We have that in common. So humans and parrots share a special relationship with sound. We don’t simply cry out. We pronounce. We enunciate.

Perhaps that’s why humans built Arecibo the way they did. A receiver doesn’t have to be a transmitter, but Arecibo is both. It’s an ear for listening, and a mouth for speaking.

Every parrot has a unique call that it uses to identify itself; biologists refer to this as the parrot’s “contact call.”

In 1974, astronomers used Arecibo to broadcast a message into outer space intended to to demonstrate human intelligence. That was humanity’s contact call.

In the wild, parrots address each other by name. One bird imitates another’s contact call to get the other bird’s attention.

If humans ever detect the Arecibo message being sent back to Earth, they will know someone is trying to get their attention.

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THE GREAT SILENCE

Humans have lived alongside parrots for thousands of years, and only recently have they considered the pos-sibility that we might be intelligent.

I suppose I can’t blame them. We parrots used to think humans weren’t very bright. It’s hard to make sense of behavior that’s so different from your own.

But parrots are more similar to humans than any extraterrestrial species will be, and humans can observe us up close; they can look us in the eye. How do they expect to recognize an alien intelligence if all they can do is eavesdrop from a hundred light years away?

*

*

There’s a pleasure that comes with shaping sounds with your mouth. It’s so primal and visceral that throu-ghout their history, humans have considered the activity a pathway to the divine.

Pythagorean mystics believed that vowels represented the music of the spheres, and chanted to draw power from them.

Pentecostal Christians believe that when they speak in tongues, they’re speaking the language used by angels in Heaven.

Brahmin Hindus believe that by reciting mantras, they’re strengthening the building blocks of reality.

Only a species of vocal learners would ascribe such importance to sound in their mythologies. We parrots can appreciate that.

It’s no coincidence that “aspiration” means both hope and the act of breathing.

When we speak, we use the breath in our lungs to give our thoughts a physical form. The sounds we make are simultaneously our intentions and our life force.

I speak, therefore I am. Vocal learners, like parrots and humans, are perhaps the only ones who fully com-prehend the truth of this.

*According to Hindu mythology, the universe was created with a sound: “Om.” It’s a syllable that contains within it everything that ever was and everything that will be.

When the Arecibo telescope is pointed at the space between stars, it hears a faint hum.

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THE GREAT SILENCE

Astronomers call that the “cosmic microwave background.” It’s the residual radiation of the Big Bang, the explosion that created the universe fourteen billion years ago.

But you can also think of it as a barely audible reverberation of that original “Om.” That syllable was so resonant that the night sky will keep vibrating for as long as the universe exists.

When Arecibo is not listening to anything else, it hears the voice of creation.

*

*Human activity has brought my kind to the brink of extinction, but I don’t blame them for it. They didn’t do it maliciously. They just weren’t paying attention.

And humans create such beautiful myths; what imaginations they have. Perhaps that’s why their aspirations are so immense. Look at Arecibo. Any species who can build such a thing must have greatness within it.

My species probably won’t be here for much longer; it’s likely that we’ll die before our time and join the Great Silence. But before we go, we are sending a message to humanity. We just hope the telescope at Arecibo will enable them to hear it.

The message is this: You be good. I love you.

We Puerto Rican Parrots have our own myths. They’re simpler than human mythology, but I think humans would take pleasure from them.

Alas, our myths are being lost as my species dies out. I doubt the humans will have deciphered our language before we’re gone.

So the extinction of my species doesn’t just mean the loss of a group of birds. It’s also the disappearance of our language, our rituals, our traditions. It’s the silencing of our voice.

Allora & Calzadilla’s video installation The Great Silence (2014) centers on the world’s largest radio telescope, located in Esperanza, Puerto Rico, home to the last remaining population of a critically endangered species of parrots, Amazona vittata. For the work, Allora & Calzadilla collaborated with science fiction author Ted Chiang, who wrote a script in the spirit of a fable that ponders the irreducible gaps between living, nonliving, human, animal, technological, and cosmic actors.

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Emily Nathan. “Allora & Calzadilla Fill Two Philly Museums With Choir Mashups and Whale Bone Songs”, New York Observer, December 15, 2014.

http://observer.com/2014/12/allora-calzadilla-fill-two-philly-museums-with-choir-mashups-and-whale-bone-songs/

“Allora & Calzadilla: Intervals,” In the Midst of Things, Performed at the Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Performance by The Crossing. (Photo by Constance Mensh)

Puerto Rico-based artist duo Allora & Calzadilla have built their broad-ranging, multidis-ciplinary practice on collaboration. Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla—partners in both work and marriage—are perhaps best known for their commission for the American Pavilion at the 2011 Venice Biennale, where they enlisted Olympic Gold Medalist Dan O’Brien to run laps on a treadmill installed atop an upturned military tank. Now, the pair has organized their largest exhibition in the United States to date, and it’s on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Fabric Workshop and Museum through April 15, 2015.

“Allora & Calzadilla: Intervals” features the 2012 film Raptor’s Rapture (which debuted at Documenta (12) in Kassel, Germany), and a handful of new sculptures, videos, sound installations, and live performances that explore the sounds produced by the body through breath, voice, and song.

“The first things we as humans made were instruments,” Philadelphia Museum curator Carlos Basualdo told press in the museum’s Skylight Atrium last week. “So this show examines sound and art as the basis of our humanity, something that came before and will exist after.”

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Playing on loop in the entry galleries of both institutions—and offering a sort of opening salvo to the show—a multi-speaker installation titled Interludes broadcasts a montage of breathing sounds that have been cut from well-known vocal recordings of musicians like Gloria Gaynor, Terry Collins, and the group Double Exposure. The soundtrack is visceral and intimately human. Including hiccups and awkward swallows, it transforms the mu-seums’ foyers into living, vibrating vessels.

The atrium at the Philadelphia Museum is also the site of an ongoing performance titled In The Midst of Things, which employs 12 members from a local chamber choir to recreate 1796–98 work Joseph Haydn’s The Creation. Dressed in quotidian attire, the group begins the soaring oratorio—based on the Book of Genesis and Milton’s Paradise Lost—in the middle rather than the beginning, singing while they move as a unified mass. Midway through, they interrupt the incantation’s epic flow, separating physically from one another, and stride toward the corners of the room. Eventually, they reform in a new arrangement and inverse the lyrics, reciting them backwards.

A trilogy of video works that present modern musicians and vocalists engaging with ancient artifacts through sound is a highlight. Apotome (2013) stars singer Tim Storms, who holds the world record for producing the lowest note every recorded—only audible to the human ear with amplification. As he wanders among taxidermied animals in subterranean store-rooms of Paris’s National History Museum, a deep, satanic rumble seems to usher from his very core. It is a subsonic version of a musical score played in 1798 for two elephants brought to Paris as spoils from the Napoleonic Wars, in the first recorded instance of at-tempted inter-species communication through music.

Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla at the Fabric Workshop and Museum. (Photo by Constance Mensh)

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A Concert for Elephants, featuring 11 musicians, compliments the film Apotome (2013), on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Complimenting the video, a second performance titled A Concert for Elephants casts 11 musicians from the Relache orchestra to play the composition originally performed for the animals. Flanking the projection, they produce classical notes that engage Storm’s mind-boggling baritone in haunting dissonance.

“We had heard this amazing story about these two elephants, Hans and Parkie,” Ms. Allora told the Observer, “and then we discovered those same elephants’ bones were piled up in the Museum’s storerooms. Totally parallel to that, we’d come across Tim—and during our research we discovered that only elephants can hear frequencies that low.” The piece, therefore, performs a rather poignant irony: as Mr. Storms fondles the famous mammals’ actual remains, he intones a song that they alone would have been able to hear.

“Things sit in your head for a while,” she added. “There are always these ideas floating around that interest us. And at some point it’s like chemistry—you get these two molecules and you put them together and it’s like ‘whoa, that’s the right combination.’ It just makes sense somehow.”

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Susannah Tantemsapya. “Allora & Calzadilla on music and interspecies communication”, Whitewall, September 16, 2014.

http://whitewallmag.com/art/allora-calzadilla-on-music-and-interspecies-communication

Allora & Calzadilla have been collaborating since 1995, partners in both work and life. This summer and fall, the artists have had back-to-back shows in the US. In New York right now, you can see their latest exhibition at Gladstone Gallery, “Fault Lines.” It features ten stone sculptures, and on after-noons, two boys moving throughout the gallery space slinging historical insults (originally coined by the likes of Benjamin Franklin, Cicero, and Shakespeare) in song.

“Fault Lines” opened just after their first-ever presentation in Los Angeles at REDCAT gallery closed. There, they expanded upon their video work Apotomē (2013) with a newly commissioned perfor-mance investigating biosemiotics and bio-musicology. Their inspiration was a concert given to two elephants, Hans and Parkie, at the Museum of Natural History in Paris in 1798. Whitewall spoke to the artists in Los Angeles, where we talked about how interspecies communication, music, and the French Revolution tie into Apotomē.

Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla Apotomē 2013 Super 16 mm film transferred to HD, sound, 23:05 minutesExhibition view at Chantal Crousel Gallery, Paris, 2013 Photo by Marc Domage

WHITEWALL: When did you first discover Hans and Parkie? How did Apotomē take shape?

JENNIFER ALLORA: For a couple of years now, we’ve been asked to make a project for the Autu-mn Festival, which happens in Paris annually. It’s more known for theater and dance commissions, opera pieces and so on. They also have, in recent years, a contemporary art section. The city of Paris links up artists to different institutions. One of the possible sites was the Natural History Mu-seum of Paris, the Jardin des Plantes and that whole complex, which is kind of the equivalent to the Smithsonian in the United States although it’s even older. It’s the first natural history museum: the paleontology and mineralogy departments, all these first collections were founded on this site that, of course, formally belonged to the King of France until the French Revolution. Then it became public.

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One of the directors of the museum had taken us around to the menagerie; it’s the first zoo that was ever created in the world. We walked past the elephant pavilion and she told us the story of Hans and Parkie. It just captured our imagination. We had just left the Axolotl room. There’s a short story by Julio Cortázar about this guy who is obsessed with this Axolotl, which is in this other famous room in the menagerie. He keeps looking at the animal and looking at it until finally at the end of the story he becomes the animal. There’s this really great confusion between man and his identification with this nonhuman species.

This kind of idea was inspired by the Cortázar story, and somehow our own interest in music. We had done a lot of work ourselves about what is the relationship between music and human evolution. We had just done a film about this discovery of a bone flute in Germany. We were thinking about those questions.

GUILLERMO CALZADILLA: At that time, the relation between human and nonhuman life was also in the context of the French Revolution, meaning people who have rights and people who have no rights. The ones who have no rights are not treated like humans; they are treated like animals.

Human, nonhuman, life forms, abnormalities, and forms of oppression, slavery, all of this was the backdrop to this concert that was given to the elephants. So you had a really incredible combination of subjects that we have been exploring in our own work for over a decade.


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WW: Why did they create a concert for the elephants?

JA: That’s a very curious subject. It’s one of the only experiments documented of its kind where there was this attempt to try to have an interspecies communication. Music could be a vehicle to enter into the mind space of another species. There is no way for them to scientifically document or quantify that, so it was never repeated. This, of course, is the moment when these scientific areas of study were first establishing and creating the norms of what is science, how you go about developing a relationship to scientific objects of study. This, obviously, didn’t prove to be amenable to those forms of analysis.

If that path had continued, maybe 200 years later we would have a different understanding of a lot of these questions that we are still facing today about these categories of knowledge and the separations that we now take as a norm. Our contemporary feeling of separateness from other species, our hierarchy that we have developed as a result of natural history maybe would have changed at the very beginning if some of these other lines of inquiry had taken hold and formed part of the social imagination.

GC: So the concert was made to see if human music may elicit some kind of reaction in nonhuman forms of life, in this case, the elephants. It was organized by musicians, not by scientists. It was a really strange event, almost capricious, illogical without any scientific foundation.

JA: In fact, there was a librarian that was part of the complex that documented some of the results. When “Ça ira” was played in a higher key, it excited Parkie, but Hans was not really interested. There was another piece that did get him finally sort of awoken. [But] perhaps he reacted because he noticed the musicians were looking at him. We don’t know why.

GC: Or motion. That’s why it never became a scientific study.

WW: The music that you chose for the video and the performance, was that based on the original concert?

GC: It’s exactly the same concert, the same songs in the same order.

JA: In the film, it’s not the same order because the actual concert would have lasted an hour and a half. This is a shortened version of it, fragments from it.

GC: Also the concert had parts that were instrumental; there were only a few parts that were singing. In completely different research, we had done works with the voice, voice displacement, the life of voi-ces, and on and on. We found our about Tim Storms, the protagonist in the film that has this biological deformity, or characteristic or gift, however you want to see it. His (vocal chords) are basically twice as long as normal vocal cords and move five times faster. He can produce subsonic sounds that animals as large as elephants can hear.

JA: But humans cannot, outside of the audible human range.

GC: Not even himself, he can only feel. However, animals as large as elephants can hear those sounds, so that became the structure or the link. Then, we invited him to come to Paris to sing the same songs walking through the Zooteque.

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JA: We recorded it with an earthquake microphone because it’s very sensitive to low frequencies.

GC: The structure was for him to sing the same concert to the bone remains.


WW: How does everything tie in together?

GC: There is a relationship between Apotomē, the title of the film, which basically means when something has been cut off, the remainder of something, the leftover. And then, in this case, the remainder or leftover is the subsonic sound, something that we could not hear, but feel, but also the structure of the original concert. There is the voice, but the orchestra is not present. For the performance at REDCAT, there’s an orchestra, without singing, without vocals. So the orchestra is going to play the entire concert in the same order. This is an ex-periment; we’ve never done it before. It should be interesting to see the way the two things inform each other and complement each other.

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Jennifer Allora (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1974) and Guillermo Calzadilla(La Habana Cuba, 1971) are among the most active and socially engaged voices on the international art scene; they have had solo shows at the world’s most important museums—including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Stedeliijk Museum in Amsterdam—and have taken part in leading international festivals such as Documenta in Kassel, the Venice Biennale, the Whitney Biennial in New York, and the biennials of Gwangju, Sydney, São Paulo, Sharjah, Istanbul and Lyon. In 2011 they represented the United States of America at the 54th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale.

Allora and Calzadilla Apotomē 2013 Performance view at REDCAT, Los Angeles, 2014 Photo by Cara Snyder Courtesy of Bonhams Los Angeles.

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Louis Déry. «Arts visuels et musique en contrepoint», Esse, n°81, Spring 2014, p. 96-107.

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Louis Déry. «Arts visuels et musique en contrepoint», extrait, Esse, n°81, Spring 2014, p. 96-107.

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Louis Déry. «Arts visuels et musique en contrepoint», Esse, n°81, Spring 2014, p. 96-107.

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Dan Fox. “9th Bienal do Mercosul”, Frieze, Issue 159, November-December 2013, page 163.

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“American Artistic Duo Allora & Calzadilla Takes Over Palazzo Cusani ”, Huffington Post, October 25, 2013.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vernissagetv/american-artist-duo-allor_b_4162422.html

Fault Lines is the first major solo exhibition of the work of the American artists Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla in Italy. The artistic duo that represented the United States of America at the 2011 Venice Biennale is known for their socially engaged videos, installations, sculptures and perfor-mances. Their work has been featured in many major exhibitions around the world. For their collabora-tion with Fondazione Trussardi, Allora & Calzadilla conceived an exhibition that presents a selection of new and recent pieces that examine the concept of borders.

The exhibition takes place in the spaces of Palazzo Cusani, an extraordinary 17th Century palace in the heart of Milan, Italy, close to the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera. The Palazzo, normally used by the Army Command for Lombardy, is open for the first time to the world contemporary art.

Allora & Calzadilla transformed the unique space into a succession of sounds, sculptures, performances, and images. In the courtyard of the palace, the visitor is greeted by their 2007 piece Sediments, Sen-timents (Figures of Speech), an imposing sculpture in which opera singers perform passages from the most significant speeches of the 20th Century - from Martin Luther King to Nikita Khrushchev. The exhibition continues with the performance artwork Wake Up (Rising): on the staircase leading into the palazzo, a jazz trumpeter plays the military tune Reveille. Among the artworks that follow are two other performances: Allora & Calzadilla's Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations of "Ode to Joy" for a Prepared Piano (one of their best known works), and Revolving Door. The latter consists of twelve dancers who through their choreographed movement form a human revolving door that lets the visitors walk throu-gh the room only by following the rhythm of the dancers.

American Artistic Duo Allora & Calzadilla Takes Over Palazzo Cusani

Allora & Calzadilla: Revolving Door, 2011.

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“American Artistic Duo Allora & Calzadilla Takes Over Palazzo Cusani”, Huffington Post, October 25, 2013.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vernissagetv/american-artist-duo-allor_b_4162422.html

Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla met on a study program in Florence (Italy) and began collabo-rating in 1995. Jennifer Allora was born in Philadelphia (USA) in 1974, Guillermo Calzadilla was born in Havana (Cuba) in 1971. They live and work in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Allora & Calzadilla: Sediments, Sentiments (Figures of Speech), 2007.

With the exhibition Allora & Calzadilla: Fault Lines, Fondazione Nicola Trussardi continues the mis-sion to rediscover hidden treasures in the heart of the city of Milan through contemporary art. Since 2003, the foundation has staged major solo shows with artists such as Pawel Althamer, Maurizio Catte-lan, Tacita Dean, Paul McCarthy, Tino Sehgal, and Pipilotti Rist.

Allora & Calzadilla: Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations of "Ode to Joy" for a Prepared Piano, 2008.

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Emmanuelle Lequeux. “Sons et Sens pour Allora et Calzadilla”, Le Monde, September 11, 2013, p. 4.

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Claire Moulène. “Unchained Melody”, Les Inrockuptibles, September 2013, p. 16.

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Claire Moulène. “Unchained Melody”, Les Inrockuptibles, September 2013, p. 16.

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François Salmeron. “Jennifer Allora et Guillermo Calzadilla”, Paris Art, September 2013.

http://www.paris-art.com/marche-art/jennifer-allora-et-guillermo-calzadilla/jennifer-allora/7960.html

Se construisant autour de performances musicale ou vocale, les vidéos de Jennifer Allora et Guillermo Calzadilla affirment leur intérêt pour le son et l'impact de la musique sur le monde. Des figures animales se trouvent également à l'honneur, induisant que la musique pourrait être un mode de communication dépassant les frontières entre les espèces.

Invités au Festival d’Automne à Paris, Jennifer Allora et Guillermo Calzadilla ont également vu le Cen-tre Pompidou organiser ces jours-ci une rétrospective de leurs travaux à l’occasion d’une séance «Vidéo et Après», offrant ainsi un beau panorama de leurs centres d’intérêt. En effet, leurs vidéos se focalisent sur la question de la musique et du son (comment le produire, le capter et le restituer artistiquement), et s’ancrent dans des problématiques politiques actuelles (la démilitarisation de certaines zones du globe, le devenir des habitats dévastés par l’ouragan Katrina dans le Mississipi, ou la destruction de bâtiments socialistes à Berlin).

Ici, leurs nouveaux travaux semblent toutefois avoir une portée politique moindre, tout en conservant leur attachement à des figures animales, notamment dans la vidéo Apotomé ou la performance Hope Hippo, qui nous ramènent dans l’espace des muséums d’histoire naturelle.

Tout d’abord, Jennifer Allora et Guillermo Calzadilla offrent avec la vidéo 3 une sublime performance musicale interprétée par la violoncelliste Maya Beiser, et composée par David Lang. Outre la beauté for-melle de ce solo musical, l’enjeu de 3 est de réfléchir aux liens transversaux qui pourraient lier la musi-que à d’autres domaines artistiques ou intellectuels, tels que la sculpture ou les mathématiques.Effectivement, la particularité de la partition écrite par David Lang, à la demande des deux artistes, est de s’inspirer des proportions de la Vénus de Lespugue, de ses courbes, et de tenter de les traduire musi-calement, de les transposer dans des arpèges, des mélodies, des harmonies.

Datant du Paléolithique supérieur, la Vénus de Lespugue est une sculpture réalisée dans de l’ivoire de mammouth, réputée pour être l’une des premières traces d’une production artistique humaine. Elle ap-paraît aussi comme un symbole de fertilité, de vie, de maternité, tandis que certaines interprétations y voient une déesse ou encore une représentation de la morphologie des corps féminins de cette époque là. Mais ce qui intrigue surtout, ce sont donc les étranges proportions des courbes de ce corps, qui appel-lent d’ailleurs bon nombre d’hypothèses quant à leur signification.

Jennifer Allora et Guillermo Calzadill ont ainsi voulu retenir la théorie du mathématicien Ralph H. Abraham et du philosophe William Irwin Thompson, qui affirment que les lignes de la Vénus se rappro-chent en réalité du mode musical dorien de la Grèce ancienne, établi par Pythagore. Dès lors, le chiffre «3», qui donne son nom à la vidéo, propose un rapprochement entre les courbes du chiffre et de la Vénus, ainsi qu’un clin d’œil à la philosophie pythagoricienne qui voyait dans le chiffre «3» le principe de toute chose.

Au carrefour de la musique, de la sculpture, des mathématiques et de la métaphysique, la vidéo 3 restitue donc, à travers un montage de séquences réalisées en gros-plan, l’interprétation de cette musi-que inspirée des courbes de la Vénus, la violoncelliste jouant face à la statue, comme si elle se trouvait

Jennifer Allora et Guillermo CalzadillaPar François Salmeron

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devant sa partition. Tour à tour, la caméra floute ou opère un plan net sur la Vénus et la musicienne. Des vues en plongées ou contre-plongées nous font découvrir les vibrations parcourant le manche de l’instrument, alors que la statue est filmée en très gros plan, mettant ainsi en avant la matérialité de sa surface.La main de Maya Beiser pince les cordes du violoncelle lors d’une première séquence, puis un archet vient frotter les cordes et produit alors une poussière de colophane que capte gracieusement la caméra. Le corps de la Vénus apparaît comme une vieille écorce tantôt craquelée, tantôt polie, et l’on perçoit les paupières de la violoncelliste délicatement battre devant son beau regard bleu profond que surlignent quelques mèches blondes.

L’œuvre Apotomé propose elle aussi de restituer une performance musicale par le biais de la vidéo. Néanmoins, Apotomé constitue une expérience tout à fait renversante, puisque l’on n’entend guère la voix du chanteur Tim Storms, alors qu’une radiographie de sa gorge et de son larynx prouve bien que ses cordes vocales sont en activité.

Jennifer Allora et Guillermo Calzadilla ont effectivement demandé à ce chanteur hors du commun de réinterpréter un répertoire musical concocté en 1798 au Jardin des Plantes de Paris. Or, la voix de Tim Storms a une particularité: elle est la plus grave du monde, allant jusqu’à huit octaves en-dessous du sol le plus grave que l’on puisse exécuter sur un piano! Par là, sa voix nous demeure inaudible, et seuls des animaux de la taille d’un éléphant, par exemple, peuvent l’entendre.Ainsi, Jennifer Allora et Guillermo Calzadilla ont filmé le chanteur au milieu d’animaux conservés au muséum d’histoire naturelle, parmi lesquels deux éléphants, Hans et Parkie, pour qui le fameux concert de 1798 avait été produit, afin de voir si la musique humaine pouvait avoir des effets sur les animaux.Des félins, des animaux à cornes, des chauves-souris, des kangourous ou des ours défilent sous nos yeux. Tim Storms se promène parmi eux, chantant. Sa performance prend une allure plus solennelle lorsqu’il s’approche des ossements des éléphants Hans et Parkie, puis les saisit dans ses mains, les pétrit, comme s’il les chérissait ou leur rendait un hommage — hommage à leur mémoire, à leur fantôme. Ce contact qu’établit le chanteur avec les os donne donc une portée spirituelle au concert, comme s’il puisait son souffle, son inspiration dans ces ossements qu’il empoigne.

Dans ce rite funéraire, on croit pourtant saisir quelques syllabes parfois, mais le chant aussitôt s’envole et se dérobe à notre perception. Une sorte de grognement sourd, résidu de ce chant impalpable, nous parvient. Dès lors, est-ce l’émanation du mythe d’une musique universelle qui se forme sous nos yeux? La musique transcende-t-elle les frontières entre les domaines de l’humain et de l’animal, comme si elle pinçait une corde sensible et affective commune au règne du vivant?

Enfin, le Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle de Paris accueille la performance Hope Hippo le temps du Festival d’Automne. Un comédien situé sur le dos d’un immense hippopotame fait de boue, lit le journal à haute voix et se met à siffler lorsqu’il perçoit une injustice dans les nouvelles du jour.Parodiant la statue équestre, Hope Hippo rappelle qu’étymologiquement, l’hippopotame est le «cheval des rivières», tout en convoquant la figure du crieur public. Peu à peu, l’animal de boue et d’argile se dé-sagrège, dont les résidus iront se mêler aux sédiments de coupures de journaux retenus par le comédien. Une manière pour Jennifer Allora et Guillermo Calzadilla de renouer avec un pendant politique très présent dans leur œuvre, à l’exception justement des vidéos 3 et Apotomé évoquant des problématiques plus universelles.

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Eleonora Salvi. “Allora & Calzadilla’s first time in Milan for Fondazione Nicola Trussardi”, Droste Effect,

December 3, 2013.

Allora & Calzadilla’s first time in Milan for Fondazione Nicola Trussardidi Eleonora Salvi | Focus on Europe

Entering the Cusani Palace feels like leaving the chaotic noise of the city of Milan to step into a great carillon. With the exhibition Fault Lines, Nicola Trussardi Fundation presents for the first time in Italy a solo show of duo Allora & Calzadilla, composed by Jennifer Allora and her cuban partner Guillermo Calzadilla. Their art has always been activist, it insinuates its reflection within the most ‘deaf ’ dyna-mics of social and political life, giving it a choral voice. Now, entering the courtyard of the baroque building in Via Brera, we are greeted by five young opera singers who, from the inside of tunnels dig-ged into a monumental conglomerate sculpture made of polyurethane, interpret the public speeches of great historical and political figures such as Martin Luther King, Nikita Khrushchev, the Dalai Lama, and Saddam Hussein.

After logging in to the great Grand Staircase, a jazz trumpeter plays the military alarm beating the rhythm of the performance Wake Up (Rising) step by step, accompanying the rise of the visitor to the halls of the palace. On the walls of the imposing Radetzky Hall, two large paintings Afghanistan Halloween V and VII of the series Intermission are exhibited. Two inks on canvas, products of manual printing from a wooden matrix, representing an unusual scene actually happened in the desert of Afgha-nistan, where a group of Marines dressed up as comic book superheroes during Halloween. A curious scenery act as backdrop to the installation / performance Stop, Repair, Prepare: variation of Ode to Joy for a Prepared Piano, which has a dedicated place within the grand ballroom. For this work Allora & Calzadilla have cut a circular hole in a Bechstein grand piano of the ’20s; from the inside of the cabinet, a pianist is trying to play he Beethoven’s 9th Symphony from backwards.

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December 3, 2013.

The symphony that history has chosen as brotherhood hymn throughout the world, as sound bac-kground to the great revolutions and civil wars of the ’900. Let’s move to Garibaldi Room, were the video Returning a Sound is shown. A guy goes on a motorcycle to the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico, with a trumpet attached to the muffler: it is a painful evocation of music, shamelessly adapted from war bombing. To reach the Braida Hall, our passage is hindered by the performance Revolving Door, where thirteen dancers play the military march, cutting in half the room with the rows, allowing us to access the next room until they break ranks. In the Allegories’ Hall we find the first trilogy video dedicated to the relationship between nature and mankind, whose music is the combinatorial element. In Raptor’s Rapture, presented last year at Documenta, Bernadette Kaffer is portrayed; a musician specialized in prehistoric tools, that in the video plays a 35,000 years old flute, made with griffin’ wingbones; the same bird that in the video seems a counterpoint to the flautist from a perch.

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December 3, 2013.

As an extra-diegetic accompaniment to the video, the singer Tim Storms proposes again that concert, and thanks to a special extension of the vocal cords, he can touch the lower humanly reachable frequen-cies. His gloomy voice in the background image of the skeletons, impose the video a primordial ritual’s aura. 3, is third episode of the trilogy, in which the movie camera rings around a paleolithic statuette; the Venus de Lespugne, dating dating back to 25,000 years ago. It’s one of the oldest representations of the human body ever filmed. According to mathematician Ralph Abraham and philosopher William Thompson, all Mother Goddess’ deformed and accentuated measures for propitiatory purposes, corres-pond perfectly to the diatonic scale. On this scale, composer David Lang wrote a score for cello, perfor-med by cellist Maya Beiser. The trilogy has been fully presented to the public for the first time in an exhibition. Fault Lines is the celebration of a dense research, whose rhythm is constantly beaten by the flow of history, and voraciously by militant voices who won’t surrender their presence to the inexora-bility of time and social condition, leaving its mark drying in the clay as the photographic work Land Mark (Footprints).

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Siegfried Forster. “Le Festival d’automne à Paris s’ouvre avec un concert pour deux éléphants”, RFI.fr, September 13, 2013.

http://www.rfi.fr/france/20130913-festival-d-automne-paris-concert-deux-elephants-jennifer-allora-guillermo-calzadilla

Le Festival d'automne à Paris s'ouvre avec un concert pour deux éléphants Par Siegfried Forster

Ce sont des vidéos, sculptures et performances poétiques et déroutantes de deux artistes vivant à Porto Rico qui ouvrent ce 13 septembre le prestigieux Festival d’automne à Paris. Avant l’entrée en scène très attendue à partir de novembre de l’invité d’honneur, le metteur en scène Bob Wilson, c’est au couple Jennifer Allora et Guillermo Calzadilla de donner le coup d’envoi dans une petite galerie parisienne et dans la Grande galerie de l’évolution du Muséum national d’histoire naturelle.

Poussez les portes de la galerie Chantal Crousel, cachée dans une arrière-cour du Marais à Paris, et vous allez vous retrouver face à l’« idéal particulier », la Vénus de Lespugue, l’une des plus célèbres et éton-nantes représentations féminines préhistoriques, projetée sur le mur.

La Vénus de Lespugue

Minutieusement et sans relâche, la caméra « creuse » la pierre de la Vénus. Le tout est accompagné par le va-et-vient de l’archet sur les cordes du violoncelle manié par Maya Beiser. Une petite mélodie qui a commencé en pizzicato et finit par faire chavirer nos émotions. S’installe alors une compréhension loin

"Hope Hippo", une installation et performance de Jennifer Allora et Guillermo Calzadilla dans le Muséum national d'histoire naturelle.Giorgio Boata

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au-delà des considérations scientifiques à l’œuvre. C’est d’après un modèle mathématique - qui a exploré et calculé la surface de la statue - que la musique a été composée pour ce film intitulé 3. « L’hypothèse de scientifiques américains est que les proportions de cette statue, par exemple entre la tête et les épaules ou entre les épaules et les hanches, correspondent à une gamme musicale et se rapprochent au mode dorien des Grecs anciens, explique Jennifer Allora. Nous avons alors testé cette théorie ».

Etre relié au paléolithique supérieur

Les 72 unités de la Vénus ont été traduites en 72 battements par minute. Les proportions de la statue, transformées en gamme musicale. Et nous voilà pris et submergés par une fascinante beauté qui resurgit et nous relie avec le paléolithique supérieur. La Vénus de Lespugue, réalisée en ivoire de mammouth, fascine depuis 25 000 ans par ses formes exubérantes qui tiennent en une main et qui restent jusqu’à nos jours inexpliquées. « Ce qui nous semble intéressant, c’est de spéculer sur le fait qu’il y avait à cette époque probablement une intelligence beaucoup plus grande que ce que nous avons pensé jusqu’à main-tenant ».

Les deux artistes Jennifer Allora et Guillermo Calzadilla, qui parlent et travaillent d’une seule voix, res-pectivement nés à Philadelphie et à La Havane, étaient en 2011 les premiers artistes vivant à Porto Rico à avoir représenté les États-Unis à la Biennale de Venise. « Leur travail a toujours été en rapport avec la nature, les origines, les aspects invisibles ou insoupçonnés qui règlent et dirigent les actions humaines », résume la galeriste Chantal Crousel. Pour le Festival d’automne, ils ont fouillé dans les incroyables et inépuisables collections du Muséum national d’histoire naturelle de Paris.

Apotome

Dans Apotome, ils font chanter Tim Storms devant les squelettes des éléphants conservés au Muséum. Une idée incongrue ? Absolument pas. En fait, leur œuvre raconte l’histoire de Hans et Parkie, deux élé-phants arrivés au Muséum en mars 1798, en tant que trophées de guerre. Les artistes nous font revivre une expérience réalisée à l’époque : « Un concert, organisé par des musiciens et non pas par des scienti-fiques, a été donné à l’intention exclusive des deux éléphants dans la ménagerie pour mesurer les effets de la musique sur les animaux. C’était le premier concert à l’intention d’animaux qui a été documenté, raconte Guillermo Calzadilla. Et pendant nos recherches, nous sommes tombés par hasard sur les osse-ments de ces deux éléphants. » Comme ils faisaient en même temps des recherches sur la voix humaine, ils ont sollicité Tim Storms pour ressusciter la performance avec les mêmes partitions. Le chanteur possède la voix la plus grave au monde, qui peut atteindre jusqu’à huit octaves en-dessous du Sol, le plus grave au piano. Un exploit que seuls des animaux grands comme les éléphants sont capables d’enten-dre… les hommes ressentent uniquement des vibrations.

L’archéologie sonore à l’œuvre

L’installation monumentale Hope Hippo ouvrira le festival au premier étage de la Grande galerie de l’évolution du Muséum national d’histoire naturelle. Elle montre un homme lisant silencieusement son journal sur le dos d’un hippopotame en boue, accompagné par les sons stridents d’un petit sifflet. « C’est un lanceur d’alerte qui lit le journal, dit Guillermo Calzadilla. Et quand il lit quelque chose qui le touche, il joue la flûte et lance l’alerte. » L’archéologie sonore à l’œuvre. Des notes qui traversent les continents et les siècles sans se soucier des hommes. Ainsi va le monde.

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"3" (2013) de Jennifer Allora et Guillermo Calzadilla, Film Super 16 mm transféré en HD, son 18'13''Galerie Chantal Crousel

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Pascale Mollard-Chenebenoit. “La Fiac, très internationale sous son chic parisien”, TV5 Monde, October 23, 2013.

23 OCTOBRE 2013

La Fiac, très internationale sous son chic parisien

Paris (AFP) - 23.10.2013 19:48 - Par Pascale MOLLARD-CHENEBENOIT

Elégante et sophistiquée dans son écrin du Grand Palais, la Foire internationale d'art contemporain (FIAC), qui a ouvert mercredi ses portes aux professionnels et aux collectionneurs, célèbre ses 40 ans avec 70% de galeries étrangères et une confiance retrouvée.

Une oeuvre de l'artiste américaine Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla intitulée "Hope Hippo" au jardin des plantes de Paris, le 18 octobre 2013

afp.com -

Une oeuvre de l'artiste américain Richard Jackson intitulée "Little Girl and Upside Down Unicorn" au Jardin des plantes à Paris, le 18 octobre 2013

afp.com -

Elégante et sophistiquée dans son écrin du Grand Palais, la Foire internationale d'art contemporain (FIAC), qui a ouvert mercredi ses portes aux professionnels et aux collectionneurs, célèbre ses 40 ans avec 70% de galeries étrangères et une confiance retrouvée.

"Chaque année, la qualité est meilleure. La foire est toujours plus internationale", déclare à l'AFP l'Autrichien Thaddaeus Ropac, qui est présent à la Fiac "depuis 25 ans". Sa galerie renommée est située désormais sur deux sites, dans le Marais et à Pantin (est de Paris).

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Pascale Mollard-Chenebenoit. “La Fiac, très internationale sous son chic parisien”, TV5 Monde, October 23, 2013.

A l'issue d'une sélection rigoureuse, la Fiac a retenu 184 galeries venues de 25 pays. Les galeries françaises, au nombre de 55 (contre 61 l'an dernier), représentent 30% des exposants. Les Etats-Unis sont venus en force (33 galeries), suivis des Allemands (22 galeries).

"La présence de nombreuses galeries étrangères est un signal du rayonnement très fort de Paris qui retrouve sa place sur le marché de l'art", a déclaré à l'AFP la ministre de la Culture Aurélie Filippetti, en inaugurant la foire mercredi soir.

"Il faut aussi accompagner les galeries françaises pour leur permettre de se développer", a ajouté la ministre. Un fonds, doté de 800.000 euros par le ministère, permettra aux galeries d'obtenir des avances remboursables. Il sera géré par l'IFCIC (Institut pour le Financement du Cinéma et des Industries Culturelles", qui ajoutera pour sa part 200.000 euros pour ce fonds.

Pour la Fiac, les affaires ont bien démarré. "Je sens beaucoup d'énergie, beaucoup d'envie. Je crois que les collectionneurs ne vont pas se priver", estime la galeriste Chantal Crousel.

"Cette édition est encore mieux que les précédentes. Paris est la capitale du monde de l'art" cette semaine, avance Laurent Dassault, grand adepte de la Fiac et collectionneur.

La chasse aux oeuvres d'art a commencé dès mercredi matin pour les "invités d'honneur". Bernard Arnault, le PDG du géant du luxe LVMH, a été l'un des premiers à arpenter la nef pour repérer des pièces.

Habitué de la Fiac, l'homme d'affaires François Pinault se trouvait à l'étranger mercredi. Mais ses conseillers artistiques étaient à pied d'oeuvre.

"Lieu de chasse et d'errance"

Le collectionneur Antoine de Galbert a le sourire aux lèvres. Il vient d'acheter à la Galerie 1900-2000 une oeuvre de 1963 de l'Allemande Unica Zürn (1916-1970), qui fut la compagne de Hans Bellmer, artiste majeur du surréalisme.

"Pour moi, la Fiac, c'est une immense brocante, un lieu de chasse et d'errance", souligne Antoine de Galbert, qui a créé en 2004 à Paris la Maison Rouge, où il organise des expositions d'art contemporain.

Pour Thaddaeus Ropac, la Fiac a bien commencé. Il a notamment déjà vendu une oeuvre de l'artiste allemand Sigmar Polke (1941-2010) "pour près de deux millions d'euros", indique-t-il à l'AFP.

Le stand d'Yvon Lambert est très fréquenté. La voiture de course rouge accidentée ("Crashed car") de Bertrand Lavier fait son petit effet. "Au bout d'une heure, j'avais déjà pas mal d'oeuvres réservées", déclare le galeriste français.

L'ancien patron du Louvre, Henri Loyrette, qui a introduit avec brio l'art contemporain dans le musée, savoure la foire en amateur et se réjouit d'avoir découvert des jeunes talents dans les galeries à l'étage.

Sur le stand de la galerie Perrotin, un cochon "tapisdermie" de Wim Delvoye attend d'être croqué par un collectionneur. Réalisé en fibre de verre et recouvert de tapis, c'est peut-être l'un de ceux qui étaient exposés dans le salon Napoléon III du Louvre l'an dernier.

Le stand de l'influent marchand d'art américain Larry Gagosian est toujours très couru. Il présente Pablo Picasso, Andreas Gursky mais aussi le jeune Dan Colen ou le Chinois Zeng Fanzhi.

A ne pas manquer chez le galeriste Georges-Philippe Vallois, l'artiste Gilles Barbier et son oeuvre parabole sur la disparition de l'écrit (une pile de livres est dévorée par la végétation).

De jeudi à dimanche, le grand public pourra se joindre à cette fête de l'art contemporain. L'entrée est à 35 euros.

© 2013 AFP

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“Vieques Videos 2003-2011,” Mousse magazine, January 9, 2012.

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“Vieques Videos 2003-2011,” Mousse magazine, January 9, 2012. http://moussemagazine.it/vieques-videos/

«Vieques Videos 2003-2011» is Allora & Calzadilla’s third solo show at Lisson Gallery. Made over the course of a decade Returning a Sound (2004), Under Discussion (2005) and Half Mast/Full Mast (2010) are now shown here together for the first time.

Each video addresses the complicated history of Vieques, an inhabited island off Puerto Rico that was used by the United States Navy as a bomb-testing range from 1941 until 2003. The Navy was forced to evacuate by a civil disobedience campaign waged by local residents, with supporters throughout the world. Allora & Calzadilla contributed to the visual culture of this campaign with a long-term, multi-sited project entitled ‘Landmark’, informed by the following questions: ‘How is land differentiated from other land by the way it is marked? Who decides what is worth preserving and what should be destroyed? What are strategies for reclaimi-ng marked land? How does one articulate an ethics and politics of land use? ’

In Vieques the future of the reclaimed land remains uncertain and largely insulated from democratic claims. Returning a Sound (2004) was made at the beginning of the process of demilitarisation, decontamination, and future development and at once celebrates a victory and registers its precariousness. The video addresses not only the landscape of Vieques, but also its soundscape, invoking the memory of the sonic violence of the bombing. It follows Homar, an activist, as he traverses the island on a moped with a trumpet welded to the muffler. The noise-reducing device is diverted from its original purpose: with every jolt of the road and spurt of the engine, the trumpet might summon up the siren of an ambulance, Luigi Russolo’s Futurist Intonaru-mori or experimental jazz. In his circuit Homar acoustically recapitulates areas of the island formerly exposed to earsplitting detonations.

Scarred with bomb-craters and with its ecosystem contaminated, the former military land has been designa-ted as a federal wildlife refuge. This designation entails further violence by marginalising the demands of island residents for decontamination and municipal management – the point of departure for Under Discus-sion (2005). An overturned conference table has been retrofitted with an engine and rudder grafted from a small fishing boat. A local activist uses the motorized table to lead viewers around the restricted area of the island, re-marking the antagonisms that haunt the picturesque coast and bearing witness to the memory of the Fisherman’s Movement, which initiated the first acts of civil disobedience against the ecological fall-out of the bombing. The hybrid device explores the absurd political inequalities of the situation: the table, a common trope for the non-violent resolution of conflict, is forcibly reliant on local navigation.

Half Mast\Full Mast (2010) draws attention to the unfinished political, economic, and ecological reconstruc-tion of the island as inhabitants grapple with the legacy of military occupation. Departing from the noisy dynamism of the earlier videos, Half Mast\Full Mast adopts a slower, more meditative approach. Projected at life-size, the silent video is comprised of 19 partitions; each is split into two landscape views of various sites in Vieques, stacked on top of one another. The horizontal divide is then crossed by two poles, aligned as if a continuous object. In each partition a young man hoists himself up the pole from standing to a horizontal position, and with intense exertion momentarily becomes an unofficial flag – before endurance gives way to gravity. The gesture functions to reframe specific sites around Vieques significant to the military occupation and subsequent struggles in terms of a deceptively simple semiotic convention: the flying of the flag at half-mast (a sign of mourning) or full-mast (‘normal’ conditions). In ‘becoming’ a flag, however unofficial, absurd or precarious, the performers short-circuit the flag’s symbolic relation between parts and wholes. In Half Mast\Full Mast, the individual body ‘literally’ stands in for the flag, obliterating it as an official place for the collective body of the nation.

Alternating in an unpredictable manner between upper and lower segments of the composition, the appea-rance sometimes celebrates or salutes a particular site (such as places related to the history of civil disobe-dience), while in others it indicates a sense of discontent, if not crisis (such as the luxury W hotel recently constructed in Vieques). In other instances, the gesture is ambivalent relative to the sites in question, sus-pended somewhere between disaster and progress, oblivion and memory, grief and hope – oscillations that rebound on a broader scale between all three Vieques videos.

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“Vieques Videos 2003-2011,” Mousse magazine, January 9, 2012. http://moussemagazine.it/vieques-videos/

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Caroline Bagenal. “Global spectacle - 2011 Venice Biennal” afterimage, November - December 2011, vol 39 No.3, 2011 pp.2-3.

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Caroline Bagenal. “Global spectacle - 2011 Venice Biennal” afterimage, November - December 2011, vol 39 No.3, 2011 p. 3.

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Carol Vogel, “Pushing the limits in Venice”, International Herald Tribune, May 14-15, 2011.

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Carol Vogel, “Pushing the limits in Venice”, International Herald Tribune, May 14-15, 2011.

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Linda Yablonsky, “Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla”, Interviewmagazine.com, 2011.

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Mckee, Yates. “ Wake, Vestige, Survival: Sustainability and the Politics of the Trace in Allora and Calzadilla’s Land Mark”. October Magazine issue 133, Summer 2010.

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Documents

Selected Press - Galerie Chantal Crousel · 2017-02-04 · Selected Press. Galerie Canal Crouel Azimi oana Galerie Canal Crouel Pari and Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla Le