Allora & Calzadilla, Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on Ode to Joy, No.3, 2008, Modified Bechstein Piano, 03/24 July 2010, 11 a.m./1 p.m., 10 July 2010, 1 p.m./ 4 p.m., 17 July 2010, 1 p.m./4 p.m., 24 July 2010, 11 a.m./1 p.m., performance, NUMBER THREE: HERE AND NOW, JULIA STOSCHEK COLLECTION, Duesseldorf
Since 1995, Allora & Calzadilla have developed a complex artistic vocabulary utilizing films, installations, performances, and sculpture. Their artistic practice engages with history and contemporary geo-political realities, exposing their complicated dynamics, destabilizing and re-ordering them in ways that can be alternately humorous, poetic, and revelatory.
In NUMBER THREE: HERE AND NOW they will present “Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on Ode to Joy“, which was originally exhibited at Haus der Kunst, Munich in 2008. Blending sculpture and performance, Allora & Calzadilla have carved a hole in the center of an early 20th-century Bechstein piano, creating a void through which the performer stands to play the Fourth Movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Commonly known as the "Ode to Joy", this famous final chorus has long been invoked as a musical representation of human fraternity and universal brotherhood in contexts as ideologically disparate as the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Ian Smith’s White Supremacist Rhodesia, and the Third Reich among many others. Today it is the official anthem of the European Union. Expanding the notions of both a prepared-piano and a player piano, the performer must reach over the keyboard and resituate his/her fingering of the keys both upside down and backwards while at times physically mobilizing the instrument to trace a path through the gallery. This structurally incomplete version of the ode (the hole in the piano renders two full octaves inoperative) creates variations on the corporeal as well as sonic dimension of the player/instrument dynamic, the signature melody being played, and its pre-established connotations. With Stop, Repair, Prepare, Allora & Calzadilla explore the fluid and organic relationships inherent in music, exposing the varied dynamics between composition and meaning, instrument and performance, while tracking the political and artistic sentiments involved in music’s history.
Jennifer Allora (born 1974, USA) and Guillermo Calzadilla (born 1971, Cuba) have been collaborating since 1995. They have been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions around the world, including presentations at Haus der Kunst and Kunstverein Munich; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; San Francisco Art Institute; Whitechapel Art Gallery and the Serpentine Gallery, London; Kunsthalle Zurich; The Renaissance Society, Chicago; and Palais de Tokyo, Paris. They have also been included in group exhibitions such as "Prospect 1 New Orleans" 2008; the 8th & 9th Lyon Biennales, 2005/2007; 2006 Whitney Biennial; 2005 Venice Biennale; "How Latitudes Become Form" Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis, 2003, and "Common Wealth," Tate Modern, 2003. Allora & Calzadilla are based in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 2009 they were DAAD scholarship holders in Berlin, Germany.
Programme
27.10.2009 Andrea Fraser
27.11.2009 Marina Abramović, Eunhye Hwang, Ragnar Kjartansson, Nico Vascellari
28.11.2009 WW in concert
12.12.2009 Andrea Zittel
18.12.2009 Dara Friedman
09.01.2010 Xavier Le Roy
22.01.2010 Bert Didillon, Stefan Ettlinger, Andreas Korte, Cornelius Quabeck, Sven Vieweg
06.02.2010 Christian Jankowski
27.02.2010 Jérôme Bel, Eva Meyer-Keller
13.03.2010 Sharon Hayes
26.03.2010 Keren Cytter, Michalis Nicolaides, Annette Sonnewend & Michael Strasser (Cie. Agar Agar)
09.04.2010 Jimmy Robert, Saskia de Keyser, Emma Hedditch, Ian White
24.04.2010 Jen DeNike
14.05.2010 Manuel Graf
28.05.2010 Joan Jonas
05.06.2010 Tino Sehgal
12.06.2010 Tino Sehgal
18.06.2010 Tris Vonna-Michell
19.06.2010 Tino Sehgal
26.06.2010 Tino Sehgal
03.07.2010 Allora & Calzadilla
10.07.2010 Allora & Calzadilla
16.07.2010 Simon Fujiwara
17.07.2010 Allora & Calzadilla
24.07.2010 Allora & Calzadilla
29.07.2010 John Bock