Aural Lighthouses Symposium & Exhibition at Santozeum Museum, in association with Performance Studies international presents,

Gabriella Daris and Gustav Metzger

DANCING TUBES INTERVENTIONS

2015

All nature, as it is in itself, consists of two things:

there are bodies and there is void in which

these bodies are and through which they move.

Lucretius, Der Rerum Natura, (c. 50 BCE), Book I, 418-421

The amplified sound of the auto-destructive process can be an element of the total conception.

Gustav Metzger, Auto-Destructive Art (1959)

DANCING TUBES x (ADDITION + REDUCTION) = DANCING TUBES INTERVENTIONS

Gabriella Daris, Dancing Tubes Interventions (2015)

Dancing Tubes Interventions is a respiratory kinetic installation that bridges the conceptual ideas of two artists. It consists of Gustav Metzger’s Dancing Tubes (1968/2014) and two interventions by Gabriella Daris (2014/2015): (a) addition: live dancing within the installation and (b) reduction: the veiling of the sound source. Using Pythagoras’ acousmatic technique, Gabriella Daris focuses on the effect that the pressured air and its sound has upon the hyper-objects of the tubes and upon the dancer; a conflation of human and mechanized dance ensemble that raises enquiry in the audience as to both the sound source and its ontological register. Manipulated by atmospheric pressure, her ethereal body is in constant strife to dance in harmony with the unpredicted frenetic dancing of two tubes that hang from the ceiling and are connected to an air compressor; set on a timer, it activates them for one-minute long with a ten-minute interval of silence and stillness. The sound score is here part of the repertoire recalling the violent force of the element of air, the art of respiration towards the inevitable death rattle and the system of autopoiesis. Dancing Tubes Interventions explores the poetics of liminal space and sound by dancing in-between. Text  ©  2015 Gabriella Daris

EVENTS

On May 19^th Gabriella Daris will dance live with the tubes over the course of three hours. This will be followed by an artist talk in which she will explore Gustav Metzger’s notion of Auto-Creative Art and Auto-Destructive Art, her dramaturgical approach to deconstructing his writings (1959-1999) as well as her ambiguous application of the Pythagorean Veil.

On May 20^th Gabriella Daris will lead a laboratory inviting the audience not only to interact with the installation but to also experiment with different notions of seeing, hearing, and of hearing unseen sounds as they are made visible, challenging their psychophysical situation by means of exploring the implementation of destruction by the natural element of air to a level of fetishization and in reach of transcendence. Experimental artist Julian Hand will perform live light projections using watercolors on slides, creating a lava-like environment that recalls Gustav Metzger’s Liquid Crystal Environment (1965).

Symposium 18 MAY – 23 MAY 2015

Exhibition 18 MAY – 8 JUNE 2015

Dance Performance 19 MAY | 5-8 PM

Artist Talk 19 MAY | 8-9 PM

Laboratory 20 MAY | 7-10PM