Die Relation der Unschärfe

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BACKGROUND This project is located at the intersection of comparative arts and Ludwig van Beethoven studies, within a visual and sound art context, interrogating opportunities opened by Beethoven's works during his 250th birthday. The debate is current in exhibitions OH LUDWIG (2020 Bonn), Raum ist Partitur (2020 Bonn). A comparative arts methodology is explored in Peter Vergo's The Music of Painting (2010). This paintings and sound installation in specific asks: How might memory of sounds (referencing Beethoven's deafness) manifest in painting? How can the increasing fragmentation of Beethoven's late works be reimagined across painting and sound?

CONTRIBUTION "Die Relation der Unschärfe" was a major solo exhibition of 31 paintings and a 18 minute 3-channel sound installation. Created for this venue and theme, I composed the paintings and sounds to tension across two disconnected gallery spaces testing narratives withing installation memory. Here deliberately blocky compositional structures heard in the first gallery space frame the experience of a surround-painting installation seen in the second gallery space. In turn the gestural language of the paintings deliberately reference the sequence of composed duration and sonic memory. My contribution is to convey fragmentation as an expressive form in relation to Beethoven's late work through a uniquely sequenced installation.

SIGNIFICANCE I was invited to develop new work and present by the director of Das Esszimmer, Bonn, a critically engaged project space presenting major solo shows by international artists since 2011. Development and presentation were supported through Cat 2 funding from Australia Council for the Arts (Whole & Part, Translation Across Modality, Memory & Trace, 2019) and Stiftung Kunst Sparkasse. 2 critically engaged reviews appeared in newspapers, the exhibition reviewed as "exemplary for a contemporary engagement with the old master." I have subsequently released the audio composition as a CD.