hcmf commission Extended Play features in new retrospective
A highlight of the exhibition is the innovative three-armed turntable Schaefer built for live performances
Sound artist and musician Janek Schaefer, whose hcmf commission Extended Play won him the 2008 British Composer of the Year Award for Sonic Art and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for composition, is the subject of a major new exhibition at Liverpool’s Bluecoat gallery.
Janek Schaefer : Sound Art is the first retrospective of Schaefer’s career, ranging from work he produced as a student to a new installation completed just days before the show opened.
National Portrait [the last transmission] is an audio snapshot of British television on 2 December 2009, the last 24 hours of analogue broadcasts in the Liverpool region. Five flickering old television sets play an ever-changing collage from the terrestrial channels’ programmes, the randomly chosen sound clips overlapping before each fades poignantly to silence.
Other highlights of the exhibition include a new installation in memory of the author JG Ballard; the innovative three-armed turntable Schaefer built for live performances; his early Dictaphone piece Recorded Delivery and Vacant Space, an audiovisual collaboration with Chris Watson and David Tinapple.
A whole room is dedicated to hosting Extended Play, which was commissioned for hcmf 2007 and originally exhibited in Huddersfield Art Gallery. The work features nine identical record players set to different speeds, weaving together the parts of a piece for violin, cello and piano that was adapted from a Polish tune used to transmit secret resistance codes during World War II. You can read more about the work in hcmf’s interview with Janek Schaefer here.
Janek Schaefer : Sound Art runs until Sunday 17 January 2010 at the Bluecoat, School Lane, Liverpool.
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