 Installation view of the Rideau Chapel, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 2001 Courtesy Luhring Augustine, New York. Produced by Field Art Projects with the Arts Council of England, Canada House, the Salisbury Festival and Salisbury Cathedral Choir, BALTIC Gateshead, The New Art Gallery Walsall, and the NOW Festival Nottingham. Sung by Salisbury Cathedral Choir. Recording and Postproduction by SoundMoves. Edited by George Bures Miller. Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller Recent Works The experience of hearing voices, of having one's consciousness invaded by someone else's memories and reflections, is at once strangely marvellous and frightening. This is the twilight zone of aural hallucination scripted, recorded and engineered by the Canadian artists Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller. Their uncanny sound works reference musical, literary and cinematic genres that encompass medieval plainsong, pulp fiction, stream of consciousness novels, historical archives and film noir to transform a walk down the road into an existential thriller. Renowned for their audio walking guides, the artists also use sound and image to create sculpture and installation. In the Whitechapel's Lower Gallery Forty Part Motet (2001) transforms the 16th century music of Thomas Tallis into a virtual architecture of pure sound. Spem in Alium (trans) a choral work written for forty voices, has a soaring composition structured in overlapping layers. The spatialisation of this complex musical structure transports the listener into a transcendent realm. At the same time it is possible to experience the voice of each performer. Unlike the concert hall, audiences may wander among groups of singers who are evoked as an absent presence, a ghost choir. The Berlin Files (2003) features film sequences that echo the disjointed space and time of dreams: a photo of a woman, a frozen landscape, a run down night club. The voiceover hints at narratives of search, danger and loss echoed by a suspenseful soundtrack. Images are used to trigger emotions; while three dimensional sound seeps beyond the film to merge celluloid reality with our own. The final work in the exhibition involves a journey outside the Gallery and beyond. The Missing Voice (Case Study B) (1999) is one of a series of 'audio walks' scripted by Cardiff in response to a particular location. These site specific sound works take the listener on a physical and psychological journey; they combine uncanny new perspectives on everyday surroundings with disturbing flashbacks in a process which mirrors consciousness itself. Leave the Gallery and enter the peeling splendour of the Whitechapel Library. Go to the crime section, open Reginald Hill's Dreams of Darkness on page 88 and give yourself over to the voices. The story ends some forty minutes later at Liverpool Street Station having immersed the walker in the 18th century streets and histories of London's East End, and in the memories and paranoias of a complete stranger. Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller: Recent Works is part of an ongoing programme strand at the Whitechapel assessing the work of an internationally renowned artist mid-career. Previous shows have included Jeff Wall (1996), Thomas Schütte (1998), Nan Goldin - Devil's Playground, Rodney Graham (both 2002) and Cristina Iglesias (2003). 7 June - 24 August 2003 Hours: Tue-Sun 11 am - 6 pm, Thursdays until 9 pm Whitechapel Art Gallery 80-82 Whitechapel High Street GB-London E1 7QX Telefon +44 20 7522 7878 (recorded information) Fax +44 20 7377 1685 E-Mail info@whitechapel.org www.whitechapel.org |
 |