April 6 marks the opening of Lost in the Memory Palace at the AGO. This retrospective of nearly 20 years of installations by B.C.-based artists Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller is a wonderful opportunity to explore the shifting, uncertain ground that lies between what we see and what we hear.
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
The AGO’s new modern and contemporary art curator Kitty Scott and Vancouver Art Gallery’s Bruce Grenville have allowed Cardiff and Miller’s work to occupy the physical and aural space of the Vivian Campbell Centre for Contemporary Art on the light-filled fourth floor.
But Cardiff and Miller’s work is remarkably dark — deliberately, as they create spaces within spaces physically and psychologically. Each of these spaces is very different and, like a film that would be incomplete without a soundtrack, none of Cardiff and Miller’s installations is complete without its own aural stimulus.
I had a chance to preview the show, and it is a fascinating, thought-provoking journey that, among many things, forces the visitor to re-evaluate what constitutes a physical and psychological environment.
There is one new installation created specifically for this show, which will tour to the Museum of Conmporary Art in San Diego in the fall, then to the Vancouver Art Gallery in the summer of 2014. It’s F-Sharp Minor, a table filled with speakers that are wired to sensors that respond to movement around the table, creating an ever-shifting symphony of sound.
I think Cardiff and Miller should describe themselves not as visual artists but composers — composers whose ordering of elements extends beyond soundwaves into physical space.
I had a chance to interview Cardiff and Miller, and I’ve edited that interview into a 16-minute podcast, posted below. It includes audio clips I captured inside their installations.
The show would not be complete without Cardiff’s best-known work, Forty-Part Motet, which is now 12 years old. Cardiff took Thomas Tallis’s 16th century motet Spem in alium and recorded each of the 40 vocal parts separately to be run through 40 speakers, which are usually arranged in a circle.
Moving through that circle changes the experience of this gorgeous polyphony.
The AGO is thinking that it will heighten the experience with this Toronto visit of Forty-Part Motet by placing the speakers in the Henry Moore Sculpture Centre.
That, alone, should make a visit to the AGO a must before the show closes on Aug. 18.
For all the details, click here.
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
