Allora & Calzadilla: Intervals

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Allora & Calzadilla: IntervalsDecember 12, 2014 - April 5, 2015Allora & Calzadilla: Intervals is the first major solo exhibition in Philadelphia by Puerto Rico–based artists Jennifer Allora (born 1974, Philadelphia) and Guillermo Calzadilla (born 1971, Havana). This exhibition, organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and The Fabric Workshop and Museum, presents a selection of the artists’ recent projects—most of which have never been shown in the United States—as well as new works created for the occasion. Composed of films, sound, performances, and sculpture, Allora & Calzadilla: Intervals unfolds over two sites: the Perelman Building at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and The Fabric Workshop and Museum.


The works in this exhibition stage a series of encounters that unsettle historical time, drawing attention to where and how human and nonhuman entities come into contact and intersect. They argue for a present in which contemporary and past events intermingle, live entities and ancestors commune, and geology, evolution, sensation, and emotion meet. Bearing witness to incomplete presences and vibrant remainders, Allora & Calzadilla: Intervals explores music as a means to measure and reconcile these elusive forces and the abyss that lies between.





Films
In the Perelman Building’s Julien Levy Gallery, a trilogy of films will be shown in sequence on three screens in an installation designed in collaboration with the artists. Each film stems from Allora & Calzadilla’s rigorous studies of artifacts and a conceptual reconsideration of our possible relationships to them. Taken together, the films continue the artists’ exploration of the history and origins of human music and the traditional assumptions about what classifies life-forms as human or animal.



Still from Raptor’s Rapture, 2012, by Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla. Image © Allora & Calzadilla
Raptor’s Rapture, 2012
HD video
Color, sound
23:30 minutes
Courtesy of the artists
Musician Bernadette Käfer plays a flute—carved by Homo sapiens from the wing bone of a griffon vulture 35,000 years ago—to a live griffon vulture. This performance connects an ancestral artifact (the oldest musical instrument ever found) to a living descendant through an acoustic trace.





Still from Apotomē, 2013, by Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla. Image © Allora & Calzadilla
Apotomē, 2013
Super 16mm film transferred to HD video
Color, sound
23:09 minutes
Courtesy of the artists
Singer Tim Storms, who possesses the lowest recorded voice in the world, intonates a subsonic version of the music that was played for two elephants as part of an experiment in Paris in 1798. The film, which shows Storms handling the elephants’ bones while singing, reactivates the animal remains with interspecies communication through music.



Still from 3, 2013, by Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla. Image © Allora & Calzadilla
3, 2013
Super 16mm film transferred to HD video
Color, sound
18:22 minutes
Courtesy of the artists
Cellist Maya Beiser plays a musical score by the renowned composer David Lang to a prehistoric figurine known as the Venus of Lespugue. As Lang derived the musical scale from the exaggerated feminine proportions of the statue, the film documents the process of transcribing the Venus into music.








Sound
A new sound work titled Interludes will play in the Perelman Building’s Skylit Atrium. Interludes restores the breaths commonly muted from unmixed vocal recordings, moments that go unheard in final mastered tracks; this work reinserts these sounds into an audio sequence referencing the original composition. This work will also be featured at The Fabric Workshop and Museum, linking the exhibition across the physical intervals of Philadelphia.


Performances
Two performances will be staged in the Skylit Atrium on selected dates throughout the exhibition:


A Concert for Elephants revisits a performance on May 29, 1798, in which an orchestra played to two elephants brought to Paris as spoils of the Napoleonic Wars. This event was the first documented attempt to use human-generated music to communicate with animals. An orchestra of eleven members will play selections from this concert, which is central to the film Apotomē, in both the Skylit Atrium and the adjacent Levy Gallery.


A new choral performance, In the Midst of Things, reconstructs Joseph Haydn’s oratorio The Creation. Haydn’s composition is based on Genesis and John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, which opens in medias res, or in the middle of the story. For In the Midst of Things, the artists have embraced Milton’s nonlinear approach: they will enact a series of reversals, inversions, and interruptions on Haydn’s work. As the choir sings, they will move throughout the space, physicalizing these vocal interventions on the original score.




Also at The Fabric Workshop and Museum

Allora & Calzadilla: Intervals continues at The Fabric Workshop and Museum on 1214 Arch Street in Philadelphia.








The following works will be presented in addition to the sound piece Interludes:


Sculpture and Performance
A new sculpture and performance work entitled Lifespan will occupy the first-floor gallery. Consisting of a rock sample estimated to be more than four billion years old, the sculpture will be suspended from the ceiling and “played” by three vocalists whistling and breathing to a composition by David Lang, subtly moving the rock like a pendulum. Their actions can be interpreted as an unproductive yet poetic form of wind erosion, directed toward uncorrupted material from the earth’s origins, a time when there were no human witnesses to the planet’s geological transformation.


Film
On the second floor, a new three-channel film installation, The Great Silence, focuses on the world’s largest radio telescope, located in Esperanza, Puerto Rico, which captures radio waves emitted from the edges of the universe. The site of the radio telescope is also home to the last remaining wild population of critically endangered Puerto Rican Parrots, who make their habitat in the surrounding forest. Working with science fiction author Ted Chiang, who will contribute subtitles to speak for the parrots, the artists explore translation as a device to trace and ponder the irreducible gaps between living, nonliving, human, animal, technological, and cosmic actors.


SculptureIntervals, a new sculptural installation on the eighth floor, presents fragments of dinosaur bones arranged on top of transparent acrylic lecterns, offering a fractured reading of natural history that is potent, yet incomplete. The height of each lectern will correspond to the original location of each bone within the skeleton of the animal. The artifacts function as three-dimensional primary texts written into the geological record.


For more information about The Fabric Workshop and Museum, visit www.fabricworkshopandmuseum.org.








About the Artists
Jennifer Allora (born 1974, Philadelphia) and Guillermo Calzadilla (born 1971, Havana) have collaborated on an extensive body of work since 1995. Through a research-based approach, their works trace intersections of history, material culture, and politics through a wide variety of mediums, namely performance, sculpture, sound, video, and photography. Their work has been exhibited and collected widely in public institutions and private collections. Recent solo exhibitions have been presented at the Trussardi Foundation, Milan (2013); Indianapolis Museum of Art (2012); the US Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011); the Museum of Modern Art (2010); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2008); and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2008); Serpentine Gallery, London (2007); and the Renaissance Society, Chicago (2007). Among numerous group exhibitions, they have participated in Documenta 13, Kassel, Germany (2012); the 5th, 7th, and 10th Gwangju Biennials, South Korea (2004, 2008, 2014); and the 24th and the 29th São Paulo Biennial (1998, 2010). The artists live and work in San Juan, Puerto Rico.


Organizers
This exhibition is organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and The Fabric Workshop and Museum.

At the Philadelphia Museum of Art, this exhibition is part of the Live Cinema series.






Live Cinema explores video and film work by a diverse group of local, national, and international artists. In recent decades an ever-increasing number of contemporary artists have appropriated these mediums as an artistic outlet, in a dialogue with the early video and Super 8 practices of the 1960s and the tradition of experimental filmmaking. Each program of the Live Cinema series focuses on a specific aspect of this work, in order to both map and analyze this important facet of contemporary art. Some Live Cinema programs are accompanied by a brochure in which writers and curators discuss the works exhibited, and also by public lectures given by the participating artists.



Sponsors
Allora & Calzadilla: Intervals has been funded at the Philadelphia Museum of Art by an anonymous donor, and at The Fabric Workshop and Museum by the Edna W. Andrade Fund of The Philadelphia Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional funding by the Board of Directors and Members of The Fabric Workshop and Museum.


Curators
Carlos Basualdo, The Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Senior Curator of Contemporary Art; and Erica F. Battle, The John Alchin and Hal Marryatt Associate Curator of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Marion Boulton Stroud, Artistic Director and Founder; and Stephanie Alison Greene, Head of Exhibitions and Publications, The Fabric Workshop and Museum


Locations
Julien Levy Gallery and the Skylit Atrium, first floor, Perelman Building, Philadelphia Museum of Art

The Fabric Workshop and Museum, first, second, and eighth floors, 1214 Arch Street, Philadelphia











Selection of further exhibitions in: United states

24.01.3086 - 24.03.3086
Mexican and Latino Art Museum | San Francisco | In Association With The Smithsonian Institution - Th
Fort Mason Center, 2 Marina Blvd., Building D
San Francisco

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Allora & Calzadilla: Intervals Philadelphia Museum of Art Main address: Philadelphia Museum of Art 2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway PA 19130 Philadelphia, United states Philadelphia Museum of Art 2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway PA 19130 Philadelphia, United states



Allora & Calzadilla: IntervalsDecember 12, 2014 - April 5, 2015Allora & Calzadilla: Intervals is the first major solo exhibition in Philadelphia by Puerto Rico–based artists Jennifer Allora (born 1974, Philadelphia) and Guillermo Calzadilla (born 1971, Havana). This exhibition, organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and The Fabric Workshop and Museum, presents a selection of the artists’ recent projects—most of which have never been shown in the United States—as well as new works created for the occasion. Composed of films, sound, performances, and sculpture, Allora & Calzadilla: Intervals unfolds over two sites: the Perelman Building at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and The Fabric Workshop and Museum.


The works in this exhibition stage a series of encounters that unsettle historical time, drawing attention to where and how human and nonhuman entities come into contact and intersect. They argue for a present in which contemporary and past events intermingle, live entities and ancestors commune, and geology, evolution, sensation, and emotion meet. Bearing witness to incomplete presences and vibrant remainders, Allora & Calzadilla: Intervals explores music as a means to measure and reconcile these elusive forces and the abyss that lies between.





Films
In the Perelman Building’s Julien Levy Gallery, a trilogy of films will be shown in sequence on three screens in an installation designed in collaboration with the artists. Each film stems from Allora & Calzadilla’s rigorous studies of artifacts and a conceptual reconsideration of our possible relationships to them. Taken together, the films continue the artists’ exploration of the history and origins of human music and the traditional assumptions about what classifies life-forms as human or animal.



Still from Raptor’s Rapture, 2012, by Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla. Image © Allora & Calzadilla
Raptor’s Rapture, 2012
HD video
Color, sound
23:30 minutes
Courtesy of the artists
Musician Bernadette Käfer plays a flute—carved by Homo sapiens from the wing bone of a griffon vulture 35,000 years ago—to a live griffon vulture. This performance connects an ancestral artifact (the oldest musical instrument ever found) to a living descendant through an acoustic trace.





Still from Apotomē, 2013, by Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla. Image © Allora & Calzadilla
Apotomē, 2013
Super 16mm film transferred to HD video
Color, sound
23:09 minutes
Courtesy of the artists
Singer Tim Storms, who possesses the lowest recorded voice in the world, intonates a subsonic version of the music that was played for two elephants as part of an experiment in Paris in 1798. The film, which shows Storms handling the elephants’ bones while singing, reactivates the animal remains with interspecies communication through music.



Still from 3, 2013, by Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla. Image © Allora & Calzadilla
3, 2013
Super 16mm film transferred to HD video
Color, sound
18:22 minutes
Courtesy of the artists
Cellist Maya Beiser plays a musical score by the renowned composer David Lang to a prehistoric figurine known as the Venus of Lespugue. As Lang derived the musical scale from the exaggerated feminine proportions of the statue, the film documents the process of transcribing the Venus into music.








Sound
A new sound work titled Interludes will play in the Perelman Building’s Skylit Atrium. Interludes restores the breaths commonly muted from unmixed vocal recordings, moments that go unheard in final mastered tracks; this work reinserts these sounds into an audio sequence referencing the original composition. This work will also be featured at The Fabric Workshop and Museum, linking the exhibition across the physical intervals of Philadelphia.


Performances
Two performances will be staged in the Skylit Atrium on selected dates throughout the exhibition:


A Concert for Elephants revisits a performance on May 29, 1798, in which an orchestra played to two elephants brought to Paris as spoils of the Napoleonic Wars. This event was the first documented attempt to use human-generated music to communicate with animals. An orchestra of eleven members will play selections from this concert, which is central to the film Apotomē, in both the Skylit Atrium and the adjacent Levy Gallery.


A new choral performance, In the Midst of Things, reconstructs Joseph Haydn’s oratorio The Creation. Haydn’s composition is based on Genesis and John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, which opens in medias res, or in the middle of the story. For In the Midst of Things, the artists have embraced Milton’s nonlinear approach: they will enact a series of reversals, inversions, and interruptions on Haydn’s work. As the choir sings, they will move throughout the space, physicalizing these vocal interventions on the original score.




Also at The Fabric Workshop and Museum

Allora & Calzadilla: Intervals continues at The Fabric Workshop and Museum on 1214 Arch Street in Philadelphia.








The following works will be presented in addition to the sound piece Interludes:


Sculpture and Performance
A new sculpture and performance work entitled Lifespan will occupy the first-floor gallery. Consisting of a rock sample estimated to be more than four billion years old, the sculpture will be suspended from the ceiling and “played” by three vocalists whistling and breathing to a composition by David Lang, subtly moving the rock like a pendulum. Their actions can be interpreted as an unproductive yet poetic form of wind erosion, directed toward uncorrupted material from the earth’s origins, a time when there were no human witnesses to the planet’s geological transformation.


Film
On the second floor, a new three-channel film installation, The Great Silence, focuses on the world’s largest radio telescope, located in Esperanza, Puerto Rico, which captures radio waves emitted from the edges of the universe. The site of the radio telescope is also home to the last remaining wild population of critically endangered Puerto Rican Parrots, who make their habitat in the surrounding forest. Working with science fiction author Ted Chiang, who will contribute subtitles to speak for the parrots, the artists explore translation as a device to trace and ponder the irreducible gaps between living, nonliving, human, animal, technological, and cosmic actors.


SculptureIntervals, a new sculptural installation on the eighth floor, presents fragments of dinosaur bones arranged on top of transparent acrylic lecterns, offering a fractured reading of natural history that is potent, yet incomplete. The height of each lectern will correspond to the original location of each bone within the skeleton of the animal. The artifacts function as three-dimensional primary texts written into the geological record.


For more information about The Fabric Workshop and Museum, visit www.fabricworkshopandmuseum.org.








About the Artists
Jennifer Allora (born 1974, Philadelphia) and Guillermo Calzadilla (born 1971, Havana) have collaborated on an extensive body of work since 1995. Through a research-based approach, their works trace intersections of history, material culture, and politics through a wide variety of mediums, namely performance, sculpture, sound, video, and photography. Their work has been exhibited and collected widely in public institutions and private collections. Recent solo exhibitions have been presented at the Trussardi Foundation, Milan (2013); Indianapolis Museum of Art (2012); the US Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011); the Museum of Modern Art (2010); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2008); and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2008); Serpentine Gallery, London (2007); and the Renaissance Society, Chicago (2007). Among numerous group exhibitions, they have participated in Documenta 13, Kassel, Germany (2012); the 5th, 7th, and 10th Gwangju Biennials, South Korea (2004, 2008, 2014); and the 24th and the 29th São Paulo Biennial (1998, 2010). The artists live and work in San Juan, Puerto Rico.


Organizers
This exhibition is organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and The Fabric Workshop and Museum.

At the Philadelphia Museum of Art, this exhibition is part of the Live Cinema series.






Live Cinema explores video and film work by a diverse group of local, national, and international artists. In recent decades an ever-increasing number of contemporary artists have appropriated these mediums as an artistic outlet, in a dialogue with the early video and Super 8 practices of the 1960s and the tradition of experimental filmmaking. Each program of the Live Cinema series focuses on a specific aspect of this work, in order to both map and analyze this important facet of contemporary art. Some Live Cinema programs are accompanied by a brochure in which writers and curators discuss the works exhibited, and also by public lectures given by the participating artists.



Sponsors
Allora & Calzadilla: Intervals has been funded at the Philadelphia Museum of Art by an anonymous donor, and at The Fabric Workshop and Museum by the Edna W. Andrade Fund of The Philadelphia Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional funding by the Board of Directors and Members of The Fabric Workshop and Museum.


Curators
Carlos Basualdo, The Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Senior Curator of Contemporary Art; and Erica F. Battle, The John Alchin and Hal Marryatt Associate Curator of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Marion Boulton Stroud, Artistic Director and Founder; and Stephanie Alison Greene, Head of Exhibitions and Publications, The Fabric Workshop and Museum


Locations
Julien Levy Gallery and the Skylit Atrium, first floor, Perelman Building, Philadelphia Museum of Art

The Fabric Workshop and Museum, first, second, and eighth floors, 1214 Arch Street, Philadelphia











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