Charlemagne Palestine – 'BUULLODDYYY SCROOOZZMICSSS!!!'
A key figure in the history of Minimal music and video art, artist Charlemagne Palestine will present a selection of videos including his highly influential and visceral performance-based work from the mid-1970s. Born in Brooklyn, NY and currently based in Brussels, Belgium, Charlemagne Palestine has worked with artists including Simone Forti, Tony Conrad, Len Lye and Morton Subotnick. Known for his extended and physically demanding live performances, most notably 1974’s Strumming Music, Palestine created a body of ritualistic, performance-driven video works in the 1970s that investigate the performer’s body as a sonic instrument, movement and repetition, and the relationship between sound and psychological states of being. Curated by Michelle Puetz.
Body Music I / Body Music II (1973-74, b/w, sound, 20 min)
Internal Tantrum (1975, b/w, sound, 7 min)
Island Song (1976, b/w, sound, 16 min)
Sacré Asnieres (2000/2013, color, sound, 10 min)
Ritual Dans le Vide (Ritual In The Emptiness, 2001/2013, color, sound, 12 min)
Palestine’s presentation is part of a series of events during a week-long visit to Chicago, organized by the Frequency Series. On Saturday, March 15, he will give a rare solo performance at Constellation. On Sunday, March 16 he’ll be present at the opening reception for an installation at Experimental Sound Studio’s Audible Gallery curated by Amelia Ishmael. And on Monday, March 17 he’ll perform his organ work Schlingen-Blängen at Rockefeller Chapel in a concert presented by the Renaissance Society.
DIVINITUSSSANIMALUSSSACRÉUSSSORGANUSSS
Experimental Sound Studio, Audible Gallery
March 16 – April 13, 2014
Curated by Amelia Ishmael with support by Michelle Puetz and Peter Margasak
DIVINITUSSSANIMALUSSSACRÉUSSSORGANUSSS, Charlemagne Palestine’s exhibition at Experimental Sound Studio’s Audible Gallery, is the first such exhibit of the artist’s installation work in the United States. The work’s components are hundreds of stuffed animals (a recurring trope in both Palestine’s live performances and visual artwork) and an assemblage of droning keyboards. Palestine regards the stuffed animals as shamanic totems, and has referred to them as “my muses my divinities my gods my soul mates my link to eternity my gateway to foreverness”—toys in a “transcendental sacred game.” They serve as animalistic foils to the audio component of the work: a mass of continuous keyboard drones that evokes Palestine’s own characterization of his musical works as “liquid continuums.” Plural, maximal, and endless, DIVINITUSSSANIMALUSSSACRÉUSSSORGANUSSS constitutes a deeply personal manifestation of the ecstatic ritualism that lies at the core of Palestine’s oeuvre.
