Lethe

Lethe. 
Opera Buffa Acusmatica

26/10: Napoli (IT), TBA
28/10: Jihlava (CZ), International Documentary Film Festival
15/11: Graz (AT), Cafe Wolf - Interpenetration Series
17/11: Budapest (HU), Kék Ló
22/11: Barcelona (ES), IBA
23/11: Lisbon (PT), Damas
25/11: Coimbra (PT), Fundação Bissaya Barreto
28/11: Pontevedra (ES), Liceo Mutante
29/11: The Hague (NL), LOOS Studios - Kernel Panic Series
01/12: Chiasso (CH), Spazio Lampo
02/12: Abredo (CH), Lo Studio
04/12: Szczecin (PL), Trafostacja Sztuki
06/12: Berlin (DE), KM Galerie
08/12: Poznań (PL), Pawilon
09/12: Wrocław (PL), Rozkurz Series
10/12: Kraków (PL), Baza - Osobliwy Poniedziałek Series
13/12: Warszawa (PL), Komuna// Warszawa

Lethe is an acousmatic opera buffa comprised of recordings taken exclusively in Napoli. They are inlaid with the music of Luciano Cilio, short-lived local composer. The town itself is the place where opera buffa was born in early 18th century. It favored local dialects over official language, mundane heroes and crimes over gods and myths, real voices over operatic singing. All these features still constitute the vibe of the city which seems to be an opera on its own. Being in Napoli means being surrounded by recitatives and arias or rather by the unique mixture of both. The local dialect with its phrasing and intonation turns everyday public quarrels and calls into music gestures. They point right to the very heart of an opera – a landscape of characters, as Robert Ashley famously put it.

Conceptual and structural framework of Lethe comes from topography of purgatory. It was often represented as an underwater mountain steming out of the sea straight to heaven. It is no surprise that the Phlegrean Fields, the land on which the town of Napoli is situated, has long been considered the place of purgatory. According to local beliefs, the latter one is in the least a transitory state. Quite the contrary: the souls of anonymous dead people remain there forever becoming traders with the living. Perhaps this commerce explains why so many of the actual local calls blasted off into the air remain there, unanswered. Or maybe they are answered but inaudibly.

Sokolowsko

19/08/2018
@
Sanatorium Dzwieku
Sokolowsko

Film that we know little of

Details TBA

ROD

Grupa Budapeszt
Piąta Wojna Światowa w perspektywie długofalowej

Realny Obszar Działań
Otwarcie: 30/06/2018, 19.00

Nuova Europa [excerpt]

Nuova Europa
@
Obieg

Fragments of unpublished book about brutalist architecture in Calabria

by Michal Libera and Michal Grochowiak

Canti Espositi

fot. Łukasz Sosiński

CANTI ESPOSITI
@
Galeria Sztuki Współczesnej
pl. Teatralny 12
Opole

Exhibition of Sebastian Buczek, Cathy Van Eck, Gizela Mickiewicz, Vladan Radovanović, Łukasz Rodziewicz, Łukasz Sosiński, Konrad Smoleński

with a program of live or/and ghost appearances of Art & Language with The Red Krayola, Asi Mina, John Baldessari, BNNT, Alessandro Bosetti, David Bowie, Sebastian Buczek, Erik Bünger, Douglas Gordon, Dan Graham, Jealousy Party, Hilary Jeffery, Sol LeWitt, Natalia Przybysz, Piotr Kurek, Barbara Kinga Majewska, Marc Marcovic, Stíne Janvin Motland, Áine O'Dwyer, Roger Payne, Susan Philipsz, Lou Reed & The Velvet Underground, Jerzy Rogiewicz, Kamil Szuszkiewicz, Gregory Whitehead and Hubert Zemler.

*

Canti Espositi is an exhibition of contemporary art and at the same time set design for a song festival. Or: it is a festival happening on three stages of which amplification systems are designed by artists. Over the course of two months, Gallery of Contemporary Arts in Opole will be filled with art pieces which consist of loudspeakers. On weekends, the same pieces will serve as artistic PA systems for concerts, performances, radio plays and films.

Loudspeakers and songs - inconspicious elements of our every day life discreetly inhabited by voices of human who are not or have never been present; tools of propaganda and erotic seduction; nooks and crannies controlled by electricity and teeth chattered and driving our ears crazy; simulations of collective experiences and inner voices more real than the voices from the speakers. In short - all that a proper festival needs.

*

10.05.2018:
18.00: Opening and performance of Cathy van Eck

11.05.2018:
08.00-16.00: Performative installation Degrees of Freedom - BNNT (Smolenski & Szwed)
19.00: Curatorial guided tour
20.00: Performance of Aine O'Dwyer

18.05.2018:
Films: „John Baldessari sings Sol LeWitt”, Art & Language with The Red Krayola, „Nine Gross and Conspicious Errors”, Dan Graham, „Rock My Religion”

19.05.2018:
- Performance of Erik Bunger „The Third Man”

26.05.2018:
- Concert of Stíne Janvin Motland

01.06.2018:
- Concert of Marc Marcovic

02.06.2018:
- Concert of Jealousy Party

08.06.2018:
- Audio projection of Susan Philipsz „Ziggy Stardust”
- Film projection of „Douglas Gordon sings the best of Lou Reed and Velvet Underground”
- Concert of Sebastian Buczek „Wabienie dziewic”

09.06.2018:
- Workshops for children by Asi Mina,
- Listening session: „Songs of the Humpback Whale” by Roger Payne

15.06.2018:
- Radio plays by Gregory Whitehead, „Crazy Horse, One-Eight” and „Nothing Like Us Ever Was”.
- Radio performance of Alessandro Bosetti „Regular Measures”

21.06.2018:
- Opera of Piotr Kurek „Ivy Snowstalkers of Ancient Apron” with Natalia Przybysz, Barbara Kinga Majewska, Hilary Jeffery, Kamil Szuszkiewicz, Hubert Zemler and Jerzy Rogiewicz.

22.06.2018:
- Radio play by Kamil Szuszkiewicz „Robot Czarek”
- Concert of Piotr Kurek

Grupa Budapeszt | Galeria Studio

Remake of Michael Snow's "'Rameau's Nephew' by Diderot (thanks to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen" thanks to BNNTMMMK by Grupa Budapeszt

Galeria Studio
pl. Defilad 1
Warszawa

17/04/2018 - 03/06/2018

15/04/2018:
Opening: 19.00 (Galeria Studio)
Concert: 20.30 (Teatr Studio - Main Stage)
Afterparty: 21.30 (Bar Studio)

Michael Snow's film remade for 4 songs remade for 4 power point presentations with objects, vinyl, hi-hat and concert of BNNTMMMK.

*

Two years after their remake of Dziga Vertov’s "Enthusiasm" in the form of a 3D sculpture and a Power Point presentation, Grupa Budapeszt returns to one of their favourite strategies by remaking a film by the cult avant-garde artist Michael Snow "'Rameau's Nephew' by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen" (1974). Spanning four hours and a half, Snow’s monumental work consists of twenty six episodes that build a microcosm which is as absurd as it is acutely logical, thus it was initially entitled "Talking Picture". Indeed, his film is a picture that talks.

Amongst a range of audiovisual experiments pursued by the Canadian artist, Grupa Budapeszt discerns a hermetic praise of a deceptive education process. One of Snow’s methods is a singing class in which Nam June Paik is tasked with repeating the chorus melody of Bob Dylan’s song "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall". In Grupa Budapeszt's interpretation, this scene becomes the most important in the film and provides the key to understand the entire work. Accordingly, Snow gives the viewers twenty six singing lessons. Yet, we should not forget that the lessons exemplify deceptive education akin to deceptive teachings included in Denis Diderot’s book, evoked in the title of Snow’s film.

Insofar as Vertov’s "Enthusiasm" was translated by Grupa Budapeszt into the language of 3D sculpture, "'Rameau's Nephew' by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen" becomes a cycle of four songs created with the help of the band BNNT (Konrad Smoleński and Daniel Szwed), MM (Macio Moretti) and MK (Michał Kupicz). The hermetic content of the songs is explained in the exhibition by means of objects and four projections: Power Point presentations. The opening features a concert that will attempt to represent Snow’s hermetic education principle. The process in question is that of a mysterious natural delay which allows Grupa Budapeszt to perversely praise philosophical hermetism, colloquially understood hermeticism and the physical phenomenon of hermetisation – all at the same time.

Cosmos-Cosmos

Cosmos-Cosmos
based on Witold Gombrowicz

Teatr Studio
pl. Defilad 1
Warszawa

13-14/04/2018
23.00

Michal Libera - dramaturgy, libretto, composition
Tomasz Nosinski - voice, composition
Le Quan Ninh - percussion, composition
Ingar Zach - percussion, composition
Jacqueline Sobiszewski - lights

part of Generation After

more information: here

Neve a Napoli

Snow
@
La Digestion Festival
Chiesa delle Scalze
Salita Pontecorvo
Napoli

31/03/2018
21.00

MINOR TOM:
Hilary Jeffery, trombone
Gianpaolo Peres, voice
Michal Libera, concept, reading

The piece is a musical setting for Ted Hughes' "Snow". It is based on a single swordfisherman's call of Vincenzo Puntillo recorded in 1954 by Alan Lomax in Scila (Calabria). I too don't fully understand the connection.

*

Hilary Jeffery and Gianpaolo Peres started working together on Minor Tom in January 2016 in the wake of David Bowie's departure. Their music plumbs the depths of blues and treads the lesser known path of dhrupad in a futuristic synthetic setting. Together with Michal Libera they have developed a new performance "Snow" for the occasion of  La Digestion Festival in Chiesa delle Scalze on 31 March 2018, which will be their stage debut. Further performances as well as a release on Silent Records are planned for the near future.