21 August - 18 October 2009
Click on image for slide show.
An exhibition of cutting edge musical compositions by Polish artist Wojciech Kosma, in which art, artist and audience intersect. In autumn 2009 IMT hosted an interactive exhibition of Kosma’s scores, directions for musical pieces and art works, the majority of which had never been published or performed before.
Many of Kosma’s compositions use radical or bizarre methods of working with music and its relationship to the human body and ask alternately for specific forms of human interaction or endurance. His poetic and conceptual scores and performances combine elements of psychology and physiology, but also pornography, logic and irony, with traditional musical notation.
In Songbook the idea of the audience as performer sits at the heart of Kosma’s thoughts about art and music in his belief that to really hear a piece of music one must attempt to play it. Visitors to the exhibition were given opportunities to perform Kosma’s scores, alongside video performances of some of his works by Jeki Zaborov. Performances from Songbook, and other works, are online here and are updated as his project continues.
Wojciech Kosma lives between Berlin and London, working between art and composition. His compositions have been performed widely, most recently at Light Industry, New York, at Goldsmiths University in London, in the Chilean Embassy in Paris and in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. His works were also recently exhibited in Lyst in Overgaden in Copenhagen, The Real Thing in MU Eindhoven, Club Transmediale, CCA Zamek Ujazdowski in Warsaw and at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. In 2007 he established the Wrong Ensemble who performed at IMT in 2008.
Wojciech Kosma – Songbook was curated by Pawel Kaminski of IMT, and supported by the Arts Council England and the Polish Cultural Institute.
Posted under archive-listing, project-listing
This post was written by Mark on July 30, 2009
Wojciech Kosma performances online: http://wojciechkosma.com/
Review of Wojiech Kosma - Songbook and Related Thoughts
Wojciech Kosma’s new exhibition at IMT Gallery seems to mirror Antony Gormley’s fourth plinth commission in Trafalgar Square. On the face of it he hasn’t really produced much, but has set a stage for willing people to perform on. Perhaps we should read this as a democratic gesture. The one difference with Kosma’s work compared to Gormley’s is that he has produced a ‘Songbook’ from which the audience are invited to select a piece to perform. This is an art alike Rirkrit Tiravanija’s, that exists within the interaction of audience members and their participation. After all, most of the public art commissions I see offered revolve around engaging a community in making the work.
Might this not, however, be about taking advantage of possibly vulnerable people that desire fame and fortune? This work seems to follow suit with the increasing trend in TV programmes that may exploit members of the public such as X-factor, Pop Idol and I’d Do Anything, etc., Big Brother, The Weakest Link, Jeremy Kyle… the list goes on. Maybe everyone does want his or her 15 minutes (15 seconds maybe?) of fame as Andy Warhol famously predicted, but does that stop the responsible media from paying them for participating? More importantly perhaps, why do the viewing public enjoy watching people often humiliating themselves in the name of entertainment?
Given the economic recession is it right to allow this constant increase in unpaid voluntary work and the increasing number of internships in galleries, etc. which have no prospect of paid work following? Did we not as an artistic community (and within this I would like to include all art forms, theatre, music, TV, film…) ought to unite together and revolt against this flood in favour of a financially viable future and fair pay for creative people? After all, creative people, businesses, fresh design ideas and the like are what’s going to lead the country out of recession, perhaps bringing in fresh export money and reigniting consumer spending. Therefore I propose a Young Arts Professionals’ Trade Union to lobby for fair pay and greater investment in the development of a sustainable future creative economy. Anyone want to join?
Anyway returning to the art, as a consequence of the performance, when the gallery is emptied, the stage, which could otherwise be viewed as a black sculpture of a three dimensional letter ‘L’, retains footprints and other bodily marks and fluids in memorial of past action, reminiscent of Rudolf Stingel’s paintings/relief sculptures which record footsteps in materials such as Styrofoam. Meanwhile the ‘Songbook’ is very much in the line of Fluxus works such as the instructional poems in Grapefruit or John Cage’s score for 4’ 33”, where an orchestra completes the work by performing 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence. The performances that emanate from the book and interaction include making a human projector stand that visualises the natural rhythm of the body and drawing in space with the body. Alike 4’ 33” background noise made by the audience (such as talking, laughter and a glass being broken) contribute to the performance convivially. In essence the viewer becomes the subject of other viewers’ gaze once they enter the minimalist art space, as might be the case in any exhibition due to the pre-conditioning that the architecture brings upon the visitor as a specialist place for looking and observing.
Review by Jane Mae Howard on Artslant:
http://www.artslant.com/lon/articles/show/9739
Time Out on Songbook: http://www.timeout.com/london/art/event/155177/wojciech-kosma