The Swiss Pavilion exhibition at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, titled The Concert and conceived by Latifa Echakhch, in collaboration with Francesco Stocchi and Alexandre Babel, will come to a festive ending with the launch of the project’s record during the finissage weekend of Biennale Arte 2022.

Although over the past seven months, sound has been absent from The Concert at the Swiss Pavilion, the finissage weekend is all about sound, acoustics, electric and electronic – with six concerts at three venues.

Detailed finissage weekend programme, venue and access information and further information on the musicians can be found below. 

Friday, 25 November 2022
Venue: Palazzo Trevisan degli Ulivi
 
19.30: Alvin Curran, solo performance (45’)
Democratic, irreverent and traditionally experimental, Alvin Curran is a legendary figure. Co-founder of the radical music collective MUSICA ELETTRONICA VIVA (MEV) in the 1960s, he makes music with all sonic phenomena - a volatile mix of lyricism and chaos, structure and indeterminacy, foghorns, fiddles and fiddle heads. While his more than 200 works for solo, ensemble and off-concert situations make use of recorded natural sounds, pianos, synthesizers, percussion, boat horns and accordions, his celebrated solo performances are a compendium of his world, which reveals itself in intimate and constantly renewed forms.
 
20.30: Cage, Lockwood, Oliveros: Works for 5tet (45’)
Rebecca Lenton - flute
Theo Nabicht - contrabass clarinet
Dorian Fretto, Louis Delignon, Corentin Mariller - percussion
 
playing
John Cage, Five (1988)
Pauline Oliveros, Earth Ears (1983)
Annea Lockwood, Bayou Borne for Pauline (2016)

Three major artists of 20th century classical and experimental music, celebrated by five exceptional performers. John Cage, Annea Lockwood, and Pauline Oliveros: three names that evoke an intimate relationship between sound and acoustic space. The number pieces that John Cage developed in the 1980s, from which the piece Five is derived, determine a strict temporal framework in which the performers choose the moment when sound will intervene. In Annea Lockwood's work, this framework opens up and frees itself from clear boundaries to bring into play evocations of nature. More precisely, in the case of Bayou Borne, the forks of a river near Houston, Texas. Pauline Oliveros, a crucial figure in electronic and acoustic music from the 1960s onwards, reminds us of the importance of what she refers to as deep listening. Earth Ears is a piece in which the musicians' use of their own ears transforms their way of playing together.
 
During this entirely acoustic concert, we might ask ourselves whether listening to the world around us defines a universal space.
 
To perform these pieces, Berlin-based flautist Rebecca Lenton and contrabass clarinetist Theo Nabicht, both featured on the record The Concert, are joined by Swiss-based percussionists Corentin Marillier, Louis Delignon and Dorian Fretto.

Rebecca Lenton
Born in the UK, Rebecca Lenton studied flute at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London and the Musik-Akademie Basel, Switzerland. She lives in Berlin and has been a member of the internationally renowned Ensemble KNM Berlin since 2002, as well as being a regular guest with Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Contrechamps and Ensemble Resonanz. She is the founder and Music Director of Germany’s first adult amateur ensemble for New Music, the KNM campus ensemble.
 
Theo Nabicht
Berlin based clarinetist Theo Nabicht is one of the most sought-after improvisers and interprets of contemporary music. He is a long-standing member of the Ensemble KNM Berlin and a regular guest with the Klangforum Wien and the Ensemble Modern. Since 2007, Theo Nabicht has been playing t Wolfgang Stryi’s Selmer contrabass clarinet with the kind support of a patron who wishes to remain unnamed. In recent years, this rare instrument has been at the center of his work, which sees Nabicht expand its sound spectrum and develop its repertoire.
 
Dorian Fretto
The Geneva based percussionist Dorian Fretto is mainly active in contemporary music with the percussion collective Eklekto, for whom he has taken over artistic direction duties in 2022. He has worked extensively with composers such as Kenji Sakai, Philippe Leroux, Oscar Bianchi, as well as with Ryoji Ikeda for the premiere of the latter’s Music for percussion in 2016. Involved in both modern and classical music, he works as guest with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Würth Philharmoniker and the Opera de Marseille.
 
Louis Delignon
An active member of the percussion collective Eklekto, Louis Delignon divides his activities between working closely on new works by living composers, projects engaging with early music practices, and his own compositional work. A regular performer and composer for theater, he is also a percussionist in the group Lolomis and the ensemble Bella Terra with Michel Tirabosco.
 
Corentin Marillier
The musical universe of Corentin Marillier is situated at the crossroads of experimental and traditional music.​ After a master's degree in contemporary music, he obtained a master's degree entitled Music, Art & Performance at the Hochschule Musik Luzern under the direction of Alexandre Babel. He also plays the Javanese gamelan and the Iranian zarb, which he studied with Keyvan Chemirani and Jean-Pierre Drouet. He collaborates with IRCAM, the Royaumont Foundation and the Philharmonie de Paris on artistic projects with an educational vocation. He is a founding member and an artistic advisor of the Lucerne-based collective SoundTrieb.
​ 
21.30: Félicia Atkinson, Solo voice, piano and electronics (40’)
Félicia Atkinson is a musician, sound and visual artist living on the wild coast of Normandy. She has been composing music since the early 2000s and has released numerous records and a novel on Shelter Press, the label and publishing house she co-runs with Bartolomé Sanson. Best known for her solo performances, which combine voice with piano, electronic and pre-recorded sounds, Felicia Atkinson has also collaborated with musicians such as Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Chris Watson, Christina Vantzou and Stephen O'Malley, as well as with the ensembles Eklekto (Geneva) and Neon (Oslo).
 
Félicia Atkinson uses musical composition as a means of dealing with imaginative and creative life. Her layered compositions tell abstract stories that alternately stretch and bend time and space, of which the artist may be the narrator without necessarily being the protagonist. This is particularly the case with her latest album, Image Langage, which she will present in Venice.
  
Saturday, 26 November 2022
Venue: Swiss Pavilion, Giardini della Biennale
 
16.00: Launch of the record The Concert
Titled The Concert, this record is co-signed by Latifa Echakhch and Alexandre Babel and published by Shelter Press. The launch of the record will take place in the presence of Shelter Press co-founders, Félicia Atkinson and Bartolomé Sanson.
 
The record is a complementary and inseparable partner piece to Latifa Echakhch’s exhibition and the catalogue published in April 2022 by Sternberg Press. As the concluding phase of the project, the record appears only after the closing of the exhibition, because it is the resonance of its sensory score. It reactivates the experience of the physical journey of the installation, without imposing itself as a transcription or an illustration. Through its texture, its temporality and its totality, the record stands as a resonance of the rhythms that have structured the pavilion, the harmonies that have composed it and the sounds that have traversed it.
 
16.30: Alexandre Babel-Florian Bach, "Asphalte" (22’)
17.00: Alexandre Babel-Florian Bach, "Asphalte" (22’)
Performance for solo drums as a sculpture by Florian Bach
 
An entirely black drum set, covered in bitumen, sits in the middle of the darkened Swiss pavilion. It is operated by Alexandre Babel, musician and co-curator of the exhibition The Concert. The near-darkness in which the room is immersed allows us to make out the contours of the action and affects our discernment and the relationship between what we see and what we hear. The drums, an instrument from popular culture, take on the role of soloist and tap into a sound continuum composed of beats, rhythms, impacts, noises and resonances. Both a performance and a sculptural object, Asphalt takes the audience through a visual and auditory experience that challenges our perception of light and movement.

Saturday, 26 November 2022
Venue: COSMO
 
20.30: Kassel Jaeger, solo electro-acoustic performance (35’)
For this new concert, Kassel Jaeger proposes an in-depth exploration of three interdependent and inseparable elements of any musical experience: sound, the acoustics in which it unfolds, and our listening. In a game of diffraction between timbre, resonance and formal development, he will propose a performance constructed in resonance with The Concert and the sensory and emotional experiences which the work invites.
 
François J. Bonnet (a.k.a Kassel Jaeger) is a French-Swiss composer and writer based in Paris. A member of INA GRM since 2007,  he became its director in 2018. He has published several books: The Order of Sounds, The Infra-World, After Death (all published by Urbanomic) and The Music To Come (Shelter Press). He is the co-editor of the SPECTRES book series (Shelter Press) and the Recollection GRM and Portraits GRM record series (Editions Mego). He also produces radio show for national radio France Musique. His music has been played in renowned venues and festivals all over the world.
 
Kali Malone presents Does Spring Hide Its Joy (60’)
Kali Malone's 'Does Spring Hide Its Joy' ft. Lucy Railton & Stephen O’Malley
Kali Malone - sine waves
Stephen O'Malley - electric guitar
Lucy Railton - cello
 
It is a particular pleasure to close this concert series with Does Spring Hide Its Joy, a piece by composer Kali Malone for cello, sine waves and electric guitar.
 
Performed by Kali Malone, Stephen O'Malley and Lucy Railton, Does Spring Hide Its Joy is based on the principles of non-linear composition. Its central elements are its adjustable duration, the implementation of just intonation and the beating interference patterns resulting from the superposition of frequency spectra. The saturation of the guitar blends with the richness of the cello, the feedback interferes with the precision of the sine waves. The gradual but constant changes in harmony challenge the listener's perception of movement and open up a space for contemplative attention.
 
Since its premiere in 2020 at the Funkhaus in Berlin, Does Spring Hide Its Joy has been performed on numerous European stages including the Schauspielhaus in Zurich, Bozar in Brussels, Haus der Kunst in Munich, and the Munch Museet in Oslo. Its ever-changing textures have been tried and tested by a wide variety of sound systems, including those of several of the most important festivals of current and contemporary music, such as Unsound in Krakow or Sonic Acts in Amsterdam.
 
The compositions of Kali Malone implement specific tuning systems in minimalist structure for pipe organ, choir, chamber music ensembles, and electroacoustic formats. Malone’s music is rich with harmonic texture through synthetic and acoustic instrumentation in repetitive motions and extended durations. The music emits distinct emotive, dynamic, and affective hues which bring forth a stunning depth of focus. 
Kali Malone has performed extensively in Europe and North America at Musica Festival, Berlin Atonal, Moogfest, Kanal Pompidou, Elbphilharmonie, Paris Philharmonie, and Radio France. Her commission projects and residencies include the Ina GRM, Berlin Monom, The Richard Thomas Foundation, MACBA Barcelona, Macadam Ensemble, Orgelpark, Elektronmusikstudion and Tempo Reale. She collaborates and performs with various artists, including Stephen O’Malley, Lucy Railton, Frederikke Hoffmeier, Leila Bordreuil, Drew McDowall, Caterina Barbieri, and Ellen Arkbro. In 2016 she co-founded the record label and concert series XKatedral, together with Maria W Horn, in Stockholm.  
 
Stephen O’MALLEY is a musician, composer, curator, and visual artist who has conceptualised and participated in numerous drone and experimental projects for over two decades – SUNN O))), KTL, and Khanate being among his best-known projects. Wildly prolific, O’Malley’s oeuvre defines a breadth of multidisciplinary interests. Music characterised by its physical extent, experimental approaches, plasticity involving a deep commitment to valve amplification. It includes collaborations with a wide range of experimental musicians and composers, including Scott Walker, choreographer Gisèle Vienne, the authors Dennis Cooper and Alan Moore, Alvin Lucier, Fujiko Nakaya, Jim Jarmusch, experimental music research centres IRCAM, INA-GRM (Paris), EMS (Stockholm) and many others. A tireless live performer who has toured extensively and has performed over 1000 events worldwide since 2000. His live performances feature a reverberating fog of electric guitar minimalism – sorcery that challenges boundaries of space and time.
 
Lucy Railton is a cellist, performer and composer who has been active on the international experimental scene for over a decade, releasing albums on Modern Love, Editions Mego - GRM Portraits and PAN. Her work, born of a longstanding engagement with classical and contemporary music, lies somewhere between modern instrumental practices, electroacoustic composition, improvisation and expressive concrete music. Over the years, she has engaged in a series of interdisciplinary collaborations, including with Beatrice Dillon, Russell Haswell, Peter Zinovieff, writer Laura Grace Ford, choreographers Akram Khan and Sasha Milavic Davies, and has performed in projects by Pauline Oliveros, Iancu Dumitrescu, Mary Jane Leach, Cally Spooner, Matmos and Philippe Parreno.
 
Venues and access information:
Swiss Pavilion, Giardini della Biennale: Please note that press accreditation or ticket to the Biennale Arte 2022  is required for this event.
Palazzo Trevisan degli Ulivi: No reservation needed. Please note that there’s a limited capacity.
COSMO: Registration from here. Additional tickets will be available at the entrance.

 

In the beginning was the end: Latifa Echakhch’s cycle of life 
 
The Swiss Pavilion exhibition at the Biennale Arte 2022 is titled The Concert and conceived by Latifa Echakhch, in collaboration with percussionist and composer Alexandre Babel and curator Francesco Stocchi. 
 
The exhibition plays with harmonies and dissonances, with the mixed feelings of expectation, fulfilment and disappearance. The sculptures are part of an orchestrated and enveloping experience, a rhythmic and spatial proposal that allows viewers to experience a fuller perception of time and of their own body.  
 
Through The Concert, Latifa Echakhch raises the question whether art, similar to music, only begins to exist once silence and emptiness take over.
 
“We want visitors to leave the exhibition with the same feeling they have when they come out of a concert. That this rhythm, those fragments of memory, still echo,” says Latifa Echakhch. “The Biennale is an eruption of artistic greatness every time. A wave that culminates in a cathartic grandeur only to then recede, leaving a deserted landscape of abandoned buildings.”