By repetition, you start noticing details in the landscape will take place from the 14th of December 2019 to the 19th of January 2020 at Le Commun (BAC) exhibition space in Geneva. With the exceptional participation of the American Composer Terry Riley , this interdisciplinary project presents artworks, films and archives of close to fifty artists from the 1960s to present day, gathered around questions of landscape, repetition and community.

Echoing the exhibition the Cinema Dynamo at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève will host a selection of films between essays and archives, experimental documentaries and artists’ films, that review various ways of exploring, through cinema, the history of music and of listening. The program blends historical films (conversations of composer Robert Ashley with his peers Terry Riley and Pauline Oliveros in Music with Roots in the Aether, 1976) with contemporary ones (with the presentation of original excerpts of Daniel Weintraub’s ongoing film, Deep Listening: The Story of Pauline Oliveros). In each of his films, the documentary and experiential dimensions meet, turning the act of listening into a way of immersing oneself in the matter and in history, and of blending together reality and imagination, information and sensation.

By repetition, you start noticing details in the landscape a proposal by MMMMM.

Program

Friday January 10, 18.00
Encounter with Daniel Weintraub (US) and screening of Deep listening : The Story of Pauline Oliveros, 2019

Saturday January 11, 11.00-18.00
Looped screening
Daniel Weintraub (US), Deep listening : The Story of Pauline Oliveros, 2019

Deep Listening: The Story of Pauline Oliveros tells the story of the iconic composer, performer, teacher, philosopher, technological innovator and humanitarian, Pauline Oliveros. She was one of the world’s original electronic musicians, the only female amongst notable post-war American composers, a master accordion player, a teacher and mentor to musicians, a gateway to music and sound for non-musicians and a technical innovator who helped develop everything from tools that allow musicians to play together while in different countries to software that enables those with severe disabilities to create beautiful music. Director Daniel Weintraub will be screening a world premiere of excerpts from the film centered on Pauline’s early career in San Francisco in the 1950’s and 1960’s.

Sunday January 12, 11.00-18.00
Looped screening
Beatrice Gibson (UK), I Hope I’m Loud When I’m Dead, 2018, couleur, 20min.

Titled after a poem by CAConrad, Beatrice Gibson’s film I Hope I’m Loud When I’m Dead is loud and intimate, poetic and political, expressive and visually striking. The film touches upon social calamities, political disorder and the urge for protest. It examines the future of a world in constant motion and refers to the question of motherhood as a metaphorical notion. In a sort of love letter, Gibson addresses her daughter. Her film unites politically active, feminist and engaged voices: the words of Eileen Myles, CAConrad, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, and the music of Pauline Oliveros, form the narration. Amidst the chaos, collective artistic engagement, community, and poetry in the universal sense, appear as the tools for positive change and action. (Courtesy Beatrice Gibson and LUX, Londres)

From Tuesday January 14 to Saturday January 18, 11.00-18.00
Looped screening
Robert Ashley (US), Trois portraits de la série Music with Roots in the Aether, 1976, couleurs.
Tuesday 14 and wednesday 15 – Program 5: Landscape with Pauline Oliveros
Thursday 16 and Friday 17 – Program 6: Landscape with Terry Riley
Saturday 18 – Program 7: Landscape with Robert Ashley

“A Music-theater piece in color video”, this is how Robert Ashley describes his notable and ambitious work Music with Roots in the Aether, a fourteen-hour long piece, in which he interviews and records seven distinguished American composers, including himself. Ashley offers rare insights into the musical philosophies, stylistic ideas and techniques of David Behrman, Philip Glass, Alvin Lucier, Gordon Mumma, Pauline Oliveros, Roger Reynolds and Terry Riley, with whom he shared a long-standing friendship. The style of the video presentation comes from Ashley’s “need to find new ways to show music being performed”. He wanted the interviews and performances to be simply videotaped in real time, without being cut or edited in any way. With these thoughtful portraits, Ashley has significantly contributed to the understanding of some of the most innovative musical developments of the 1960s. Three video portraits from Music with Roots in the Aether are featured in this program. (Copyright © P Robert Ashley, 1976)

Sunday January 19, 11.00-18.00
Looped screening
Luke Fowler (UK), Electro-Pythagorus: A Portrait of Martin Bartlett, 2017, couleur, 45min

Electro-Pythagorus: A Portrait of Martin Bartlett is an homage to the British-Canadian composer and experimental electronic musician Martin Bartlett (1939-1993). Bartlett was an innovator and researcher, who blurred the lines between music, technology, ethnography, and mysticism. Inspired by avant-garde composers like John Cage and Terry Riley, he built his own electronic instruments and was a pioneer in the use of the ‘microcomputer’ in the 1970s and 1980s. He described his handcrafted instruments as “topograph[ies] of uncertainties with which we become acquainted through practice.” Creating one’s own instruments was, in his view, a way to reduce technological anonymity. Through archival footage, friends’ accounts and readings of Bartlett’s letters, the Glasgow-based artist Luke Fowler realizes an evocative, intimate and unique portrait of a figure that remained too little known, even in the sphere of electronic music. (Courtesy Luke Fowler and LUX, London)