Published in: Parkett 82, Zürich/New York 2008.
Susan Philipsz` sound pieces in space
Every ten years the German city of Münster hosts the Sculpture Projects Münster, presenting a broad spectrum of new artistic initiatives.[1] The park bordering on Lake Aa is one of the contributors’ preferred locations. As you stroll along the shore past structures that house former projects, you come to the gigantic reinforced concrete columns of the Torminbrücke, whose interlocked arches support the bridge that links the idyllic park with a suburb. On one side the green expanses of the park; on the other the low, uniform buildings of a bedroom community. Instinctively we want to move on and escape this uninspired location, but we are arrested by the sound of two intoxicating voices. From loudspeakers on either side, we hear a piece from Jacques Offenbach`s opera Tales of Hoffmann (1881) resounding across the water. The lyrics, taken from E.T.A. Hoffmann`s “Story of the Lost Reflection,” (1815) tell us abour the beautiful courtesan Giulietta from Venice, who seduces men into giving away their reflection. Tragically neither wives nor children will ever recognize them again. “Time is fleeting and bears away the passions that possess us, far from this enchanted shore returning never more.”[2] Susan philipsz sings both voices, Giulietta’s and her lover’s.
The artist works with extremely ephemeral material: her own voice. She rarely gives live performances, ordinarily playing recordings of her voice on simple loudspeakers either indoors or outdoors. Sometimes ambient sounds accompany these found pieces of music history. Whether it is a romantic aria, a political song or a catchy pop melody, Philipsz renders her selection of well-known tunes and texts a cappella. She is not interested in a polished performance and does entirely without instrumental arrangement or accompaniment. What listeners hear is a firm voice singing the tales in English, resonating in space and generating a palpable physical presence.
The unusual acoustics of LOST REFLECTION (2007), framed by the arched underside of the bridge above and the surface of the water below, produces an echo that bounces back and forth from shore to shore. The sound of the reverberations automatically conjures visual information as well. Were we to rely exclusively on our sense of hearing, we would still know that the space is probably empty and relatively extensive. We know that such reverberations can only be heard in vast, vacant areas and that the presence of any object would block the sound waves. Hence, the site is shaped by the sense of hearing. We see no one, but the echo becomes a presence in space that provokes powerful visual images. In Greek mythology, Echo is a nymph who tragically suffers the loss of her body’ having abetted Jupiter’s sexual escapades, Echo is punished by his wife, the goddess Juno, who deprives her of speech except for the repetition of another’s last two words. Soon afterwards, Echo succumbs to her unrequited passion for Narcissus until “unsleeping grief wasted her sad bod¡ reducing her to dried out skin and bones, then voice and bones only’.. now only voice.”[3] But in contrast to Echo’s disembodied voice, Philipsz’s “refrain will continue to play out whether there is an audience there or not.”[4] This is an effect that can easily be generated given the now self-evident technology of recording and transmitting sound. In her exhibition for the Malmö Konsthall, “Stay With Me” (2005), Philipsz had three songs transmitted via loudspeakers in an area of several thousand square yards. The white galleries were bereft of visual stimuli with the exception of one explanatory wall text. The title of one of the songs the artist recorded for her exhibition asks us to “Watch With Me.” She has set up the song in space so that its transmission is affected simultaneously by reverberating echoes and sound absorption. The sound waves of her voice bounce off the walls but they are also absorbed by the visitors. This twin effect in the white interiors of art institutions leads to a heightened sense of space and of the voice that is singing to it. The echoes of Philipsz’s sung narratives mark out the parameters of a space with sound; conversely, the visible room has an impact on the audible music.
Is this perhaps a new kind of Gesamtkunstwerk, in which artistic genres are synaesthetically united by a common goal? The potential of synaesthesia was exploited in the nineteenth century above all by composer Richard Wagner, who aimed to meld music, language, and stage set into an inseparable whole’ Shortly before he dies, Wagner’s tragic hero Tristan cries, “What, do I hear the light?” Wagner’s belief that there is no hierarchy of sensual impressions since all of our senses perceive simultaneously, has been confìrmed, not least by the neurophysiologic research of recent decades. In 1983, exhibition-maker Harald Szeemann added a social dynamic to the concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk involving all of the senses in altering consciousness could pave the way to utopian thoughts.[6]
Susan Philipsz also integrates language, music, and location into her work as a synthaesthetic experience in an open-ended social context. But it would be off the mark to consider her work a Gesamtkunstwerk in the sense of Wagner or Szeemann, for she readily relinquishes control over the definition of site and avenues of transmission. “Watch one hour with me / Stay just a while by my side,/… / I won’t ask you to stay long with me / Just help me find my mind.”[7] The voice invites us to stay a while, and the verse ends with the vague hope of returning to reason. Despite the general nature of the lyrics, we have the feeling that this is a very personal narrative and that we are close to the narrator, an impression reinforced not least by the live recording that has not eliminated the breathing and minor glitches. On the contrary, the singer’s breaths and pauses invest the public space with a sense of intimacy. The artist’s only live performance so far was heard via intercom in a Tesco supermarket in Manchester, 1997, and again in London in 2004. The acoustic curtain of so-called branded music ordinarily transmitted to encourage customer-buying was interrupted hourly by a lone voice, with no instrumental support, intoning, “Now the drugs don’t work / They just make you worse….” The poignant ballad “The Drugs Don’t Work” by the Britpop band The Verve instantly hit the top of the charts in Britain when it was released in 1997, becoming one of the year’s most popular songs. By choosing, in METROPOLA (1997), to exploit channels that are meant to operate almost subliminally, Philipsz startled her listeners. The melancholy sense of failure expressed by a human voice issuing from the supermarket intercom system is heightened through contrast with consumerism’s unrelenting promise of success. The voice promises nothing, offers nothing, asks for nothing. It is just there. The artist makes an appearance, not physically but with her voice, like the presence of an echo. Under a bridge, in a museum, or in a supermarket-wherever we encounter the songs of Susan Philipsz, they trigger carefully deliberated connections between linguistic and visual memory. The image of the place already begins to change even while listening: a truck rumbles by overhead, other visitors introduce new sounds, employees stock the shelves in the supermarket. These effects not only influence the concrete geographical situation; they also conjure expectations and visual memories.
In Büro Friedrich in Berlin, Philipsz confronted visitors with the unsettling situation of an almost empty exhibition space illuminated only from outside (THE GLASS TRACK, 2005). Different sounds issued from four loudspeakers, sounds recorded by the artist rubbing the rims of wine glasses, their pitch determined by the water level. Suddenly one notices used glasses from the preview still standing in the corners of the room. The only other item in the cavernous space is a text on the wall by the legendary conceptual artist Robert Barry who devoted himself to exploring the limitations of presence and visibility. “A place to which we can come, and for a while, be free to think about what we are going to do.” A special kind of presence is generated, above all, by the supposedly empty space that provokes powerful images, although Philipsz does not use it to communicate any visual signals. One could, in fact, describe her method as a “photographic soundtrack” that keeps cropping up in the interstices between opera, radio play, and visual, filmic memory. Music and language as spatial and performative phenomena are playing an increasingly important role in contemporary art.[8] Many works also use the format of the ater performance to study its relationship to time and space.[9] Philipsz focuses on what is not there: the show, the audience, the multimedia spectacle. There is no doubt about it: Susan Philipsz’s works begin where the Gesamtkunstwerk ends.
Notes
[1] The Sculpture Project Münster, 16 June- 30 September 2007, since 1977.
[2] Jacques Offenbach, Les Contes d` Hoffmann, premiere 1881.
[3] Ovid, Melamorþhoses, translated by Charles Martin (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005), p. 106.
[4] Susan Philipsz, quoted in Susan Philipsz: Stay With Me, (Malmö: Malmö Konsthall, 2005), p. 15.
[5] Gerhard Roth, Das Gehirn und seine Wirklichkeit (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp-Verlag, 1997).
[6] Harald Szeemann (ed.), The Tendency Towards the Total Work of Art: European Utopias Since 1800 (Zürich, Kunsthaus Zürich, Sauerländer-Verlag, 1983).
[7] Joe Wise, “Watch With Me,” 1972.
[8] Burkhard Meltzer, “Make it happen – Johanna Billings musi- kalische Gemeinschaftsplojekte,” Kunstbulletin (November 2007)
[9] Cf. Erika Fischer-Lichte (ed.), Diskurse des Theatralen (Basel: Francke-Verlag, 2005 ) .