“For the next three months the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands … is being given over to the American composer and conductor Ari Benjamin Meyers … as part of a project called ‘Kunsthalle for Music,’ ” writes Nina Siegal in Wednesday’s (1/24) New York Times. “The walls of the museum have been stripped of art…. Mr. Meyers … came up with the idea of a musical ‘kunsthalle,’ the German word for a public building where art is displayed…. This ‘takeover’ of an art space by an ensemble of musicians is an experiment to explore how contemporary classical music can be experienced as a form of contemporary art…. The range of music on display begins with excerpts from Erik Satie’s ‘Vexations’ … from around 1893, through Steve Reich ‘Clapping Music for Two Performers’ from 1972, up to Mr. Meyers’s own ‘Elevator Music,’ a 2016 piece that will be performed live in the … elevator by a cellist. [‘Séance’], one of four new commissions, was created by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, a French artist who described herself as a visual artist with ‘a strong relationship to music’ rather than a musician or a composer.”
Posted January 26, 2018
