Aura Satz: VENTRILOQUA & INTRASONIC

Ventriloqua

Friday 27th January 2012 7pm

BFI Southbank Gallery

A re-staging of Aura Satz’s  'Ventriloqua' performance with thereminist extraordinaire Lydia Kavina playing the electromagnetic waves of a pregnant body. Referencing ventriloquism, as in ‘belly-speaking’, the body becomes a musical instrument, an antenna, a medium, through which a pre-verbal, pre-vocal otherworldly voice is transmitted. Meanwhile, acoustic shapes speak an un-codified language, using salt sound-figures and the flame alphabet of fire-code.

Lydia Kavina: Born in Moscow, Lydia  began studying the theremin at the age of 9 under the direction of  Léon Theremin, who was cousin of her grandfather.  Five years later she was ready to give her first  theremin concert, which marked the beginning of her musical career that has so far led to more than a thousand concerts and theatre, radio and television performances throughout the world. Kavina recorded 3 solo CDs with original music for theremin  and played for a number of film soundtracks including “Ed Wood” and “eXistenZ” with music  by Howard Shore and ''The Machinist'' by Roque Banos. http://www.lydiakavina.com/biogr.html

(Free but limited capacity booking advised info@suumproject.com)
https://www.facebook.com/events/213990725354811/

Part of the Samsung Art+ prize exhibition
18-29 January 
BFI Southbank 
Project space

http://www.samsung.com/uk/artplus/
https://www.bfi.org.uk/whatson/bfi_southbank/exhibitions/mezzanine_and_beyond/the_project_space/samsung_art_prize

Aura Satz, Ventriloqua, 2003-4, with Anna Piva, photo Karni Arieli

Performed at the final stages of Aura Satz's pregnancy, ‘Ventriloqua’ is a video-performance of a one-off event in which the musician Anna Piva played the electromagnetic waves of her belly using a theremin.  A truly literal ventriloquist act of ‘belly-speaking’, the artist was transformed into a musical instrument, an antenna, a medium, through which an otherworldly voice was transmitted.  Like an immobile tableaux vivant or an anatomical wax model, the body became a vessel, a mouthpiece through which the disembodied voice appeared re-embodied. One body placed within another body, speaking and spoken through, producing abstract musical utterances which might predict the future, although destined to remain in an amniotic amnesia.

Aura Satz, Ventriloqua, 2003-4, photo Karni Arieli

Stills and the accompanying text of ‘Ventriloqua’ as performed at FACT (centre for Film, Art & Creative Technology) in Liverpool (2004) feature as artist’s pages and the cover image of ‘Performance Research,’ (9.3. On Generation), and was included in the touring feature film DRIFT (see below).

It was also re-enacted in 2006 at the Freemason's Temple of the Great Eastern Hotel, in London, an exclusive evening of performance featuring Marisa Carnesky, Serena Korda, Aura Satz, Tai Shani, and Lindsay Seers.

DRIFT
Various UK artists, Duration: 90 min, Curated by Iliyana Nedkova, Initiated and produced by New Media Scotland

Premiered as part of Black Box strand of the 58th Edinburgh International Film Festival (2004), and launch of a DRIFT booklet with programmes notes and essays by Iliyana Nedkova and Shane Danielsen, Director of Edinburgh International Film Festival.  From September 2004 touring across the UK and internationally.

Screenings include British Council, Belgrade, Serbia; The Museum of Voivodina as part of 8thVideomedeja Festival, Novi Sad, Serbia; An Tuireann Arts Centre, Isle of Skye (2004-5).

A hand-picked collection of short digital films and videos by UK artists and film-makers interested in sound art, noise, acoustics and experimental music. Over 90 minutes featuring 18 films revealing the cinematic relationship of sound and image.  DRIFT features artists' films and videos by Victoria Clare Bernie, Chris Bowman, Rob Kennedy, Kelly Richardson, Holger Mohaupt, Susanne Ramsenthaler, Aura Satz, Paddy Kernohan, Richard Ashrowan, Alexander Hamilton, Shannon Tofts, Simon Tricker, Peter Collis, Emily Richardson, Susan Black, Ian Helliwell, John Butler, Jayne Parker, John Carson and Michelle Deignan.

Part of DRIFT – a project established by New Media Scotland in 1999 as an ongoing exploration of sound art and experimental music, including radio broadcasts, moving image, publications and occasional live events. More information about DRIFT at http://www.mediascot.org/drift.

Initiated and produced by New Media Scotland, Edinburgh. Supported by the LUX, London and Edinburgh International Film Festival. Funded by the Scottish Arts Council and Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science and Technology.

INTRASONIC
was awarded the Special Prize at the First International Prize for Performance

Presented at the Centrale di Fies (Dro), in collaboration with the Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea di Trento, Italy, on the 10th September 2005.

Jury: Marina Abramovic (performance artist), Sabine Folie (curator of the Kunsthalle, Vienna), Renato Barilli (art critic and lecturer), Andrea Lissoni (Xing Gallery, Milan), Fabio Cavallucci (Galleria Civica d’Arte Contemporanea, Trento) and Barbara Boninsegna (Centrale di Fies, Dro).  

Intrasonic folds inwards into the body’s intra-uterine space by employing a theremin, and expands outwards, as the body extricates itself from the coffin-like cavity of a grand piano.

Part 1: A musician plays the electromagnetic waves of a pregnant body using a theremin. Referencing ventriloquism, as in ‘belly-speaking’, the body becomes a musical instrument, an antenna, a medium, through which a pre-verbal, pre-vocal otherworldly voice is transmitted.  (See below for an earlier incarnation of this project, entitled 'Ventriloqua' )

Aura Satz, Intrasonic, 2005. Photo Hugo Munoz

Part 2: A performer unplucks himself free from the entangled web of the chords of a grand piano, like a frantic Houdini. The eviscerated piano is vandalised to become a labyrinthine mess of impossible sounds. The choreography and music collapse into one single act of escapology.

Aura Satz, Intrasonic, 2005. Photo Hugo Munoz

Intrasonic part 2, from inside the piano