FINDET STATT IN / TAKES PLACE AT:
KW Institute for Contemporary Art – Auguststraße 69 10117 Berlin
Certain Sundays richtet einen Abend aus, der Werke und Gedanken zweier Künstler aus Boston versammelt: Helen Mirra und Ernst Karel. Konkrete und abstrakte Orte, Parteilichkeit und Objektivität, Nicht-informative Informationen, Nicht-dokumentarische Dokumente sind Bestandteile eines Programms, in dem wir 16mm Filme und Klangstücke von Mirra und Karel – solo ebenso wie im Ensemble – versammeln werden.
Location Recordings ist eine Kooperation der KW Institute for Contemporary Art und Certain Sundays und findet in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Berliner Künstlerprogramm/DAAD statt.
Certain Sundays presents an evening of works and thoughts from Boston-based artists Helen Mirra and Ernst Karel. Place and abstraction, partiality and impartiality, non-informative information, and non-documentary documents will be on offer as we explore sound works and 16mm films by Mirra and Karel individually and as a collaborative team.
Location Recordings is a cooperation of KW Institute for Contemporary Art and Certain Sundays and is realized in collaboration with the Berliner Künstlerprogramm/DAAD.
Note: In advance of the salon, and in the context of Mirra’s exhibition opening the same weekend, the collaborative work Swiss Mountain Transport Systems, multi-channel version will be playing at KW Saturday 26 November, 17:00-22:00, and Sunday 27 November, 15:00-17:00.
Swiss mountain transport systems, multi-channel version is a 68-minute audio composition constructed of location recordings and percussion. The location recordings were made during the summer and fall of 2008 while Karel and Mirra were in residence in Basel, Switzerland. Over the course of frequent walks in the mountains in different parts of Switzerland, Karel recorded the various transport systems which are specific to mountainous terrain — gondolas, funiculars, and chairlifts — of different types, of different vintages, and accessing different elevations. Recorded with high-quality microphones and preamps from within these mostly enclosed mobile environments, the sounds include mechanical drones, intermittent percussiveness, and transient acoustic glimpses of a vast surrounding landscape inhabited by humans and other animals. To make this multi-channel version, Mirra subsequently recorded the percussion parts in the studio using multiple microphones in multiple configurations. The minimal percussion activates and modifies the contours of the listening space, as it contrasts with, complements, interrupts, and augments the sounds of transport.
Berliner
Künstlerprogramm/
DAAD
Helen Mirra engages with varied scrap media. Among the various forms in which she operates, there is always a locatable source material upon which decisions are made. After a number of years making discrete works in various materials considering various subjects, Mirra’s present rhythm of working takes the form of walking, and along they way making a materialized aspect which may be visual, aural, or textual.
Other recent projects include Farbenweg, indirekter, architecturally embedded among the houses of the Universalmuseum Joanneum in Graz, Austria, Instance the Determination at the University of Chicago, the book Cloud, the, 3, with an afterword by Lyn Hejinian (JRP Ringier/Christoph Keller Editions), and a GSA Art in Architecture project at the Minnesota – Canada border.
Ernst Karel works with analog electronics and with location recordings, sometimes separately, sometimes in combination, to create audio pieces that move between the abstract and the documentary. Karel’s audio work also includes electro-acoustic improvisation and composition; fieldwork-based academic research in the anthropology of sound; recording, mixing, and sound design for public radio and for nonfiction film and video; solo and collaborative sound installations.
Recent projects include Swiss Mountain Transport Systems (Gruenrekorder, 2011), Heard Laboratories (and/OAR, 2010), a duo album with Annette Krebs, Falter 1-5 (Cathnor, 2010), and Electricals (another timbre, 2009), the fourth CD by Karel’s electroacoustic duo project with Kyle Bruckmann, EKG. He also performs regularly with the New England Phonographers Union. Karel currently manages the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard University, where he co-teaches courses in media archaeology and ethnographic video and audio production.