Deep Cuts
November 24, 2012–February 17, 2013
Marres
Centre for Contemporary Culture
Capucijnenstraat 98
6211 RT Maastricht
T +31 (0)43 3270207
F +31 (0)43 3270208
info [at] marres.org
As part of the series of exhibitions that investigates the idea of avant-garde, the exhibition Deep Cuts takes a look at music and sound as forms of culture or counterculture intrinsic to different processes of modernization.
The exhibition explores the role and influence of music and sound within (mass) culture through the artist’s perspective. Central to the exhibition is the idea that music has a political position within society. This idea can be traced back to Plato, whose ‘doctrine of ethos’ describes the power of music to affect a person’s soul. In Plato’s conception, music therefore contains a dangerous potential. Even in our less spiritual societies where music is fully part of commercial culture it could still be considered an uncontrollable force.
As a form of communication using a non-representational language, music offers an alternative sort of political language separate from the rhetorical. This political power supersedes the protest song of folk music, the anti-establishment of punk or the experimentation of the avant-garde, even though all might still be viable forms to consider the relation between music and politics. The premise of Deep Cuts is that music—a ubiquitous presence in culture—is political both in gesture and in effect, and therefore reflects the times in which it is produced.
Music and sound have always inspired artists to expand notions of time and space within their (static) practices. Deep Cuts presents a select body of film and installation works by artists who are examining the relation between sound, language and matter. The musical language in this exhibition includes singing, the solo and choral voice, sound, soundtracks, and forms of orchestration and choreography. The works draw from musical legacies as different as folk, hip-hop, electro and religious songs. Finally, the relation between music and the political is also addressed in works investigating the social history of music.
Works in the exhibition by
Art & Language with Red Krayola, Bonnie Camplin, Jason Coburn, Paul Elliman, Will Holder, Scott Joseph, Nicholas Matranga, Michaela Meise, Michele Di Menna, Jochen Schmith, Benjamin Seror, Lucie Stahl, Holger Steen
Exhibition essay
The Torch in My Ear by Scott Joseph
Reader
The reader Deep Cuts–Texts About Music, which includes various historical and
contemporary texts about music, is on display in the bookshop.
Events programme
December 15
14h Screening of Luke Fowler‘s Pilgrimage from Scattered Points (2006, 45 min, colour, sound), a film about the English composer Cornelius Cardew (1936–1981) and The Scratch Orchestra (1968–73).
December 22
12.30h Guided tour through the exhibition by the curator
14h Screening of Dan Graham‘s Minor Threat (1983, 38:18 min, color, sound), a film where Graham documents Minor Threat, a ‘hardcore’ band from Washington D.C., in a performance at the legendary punk-club CBGB in New York.
January 12
15h Lecture – performance The Firework Code by artist Jason Coburn which combines ideas of rhythm and modulated synthesis as a way of loosening the authority of facts.
January 19
14h Screening of Luke Fowler‘s Pilgrimage from Scattered Points (2006).
15h Talk by typographer, editor and performer Will Holder on his forthcoming publication Yes, But Is It Edible? – a scored biography of American composer Robert Ashley for two or more voices.
January 26
14h Screening of Dan Graham‘s Minor Threat (1983).
15h Lecture America The Beautiful: social and historical upheavals through 50 years of US songs titled ‘America’, by curator and writer Noëllie Roussel.
16h Lecture by artist and writer Paul Elliman about a.o. the Votrax voice company in Detroit and the presentation of a Parlet record remade with GPS voices.
January 27
12.30h Guided tour through the exhibition by the curator
February
(date and location to be announced)
Concert Michaela Meise
Concert Holger Steen
February 19
20h Concert by artist Benjamin Seror in Take Five Bar, Bredestraat 14, Maastricht.
Deep Cuts is curated by Lisette Smits
Hours: Marres, Marres Books and Marres Kitchen are open from Wednesday through Sunday between noon and 19h.
