Anri Sala3-2-1...Long Sorrow
Curated by Edi Muka
26.6.2012 - 4.8.2012
Opening: 26.6.2012 at 20:00 hrs.
with the 3-2-1 performance featuring free jazz
musician Pierre Borel, responding on saxophone to the recording of Jemeel
Moondoc.
Artist talk with Anri Sala
27.6.2012 at 20:00hrs.
Anri Sala was born in 1974 in Tirana. He is a
contemporary artist whose primary medium is video. He studied art at the
Albanian Academy of Arts from 1992 to 1996, video at the Ecole Nationale des
Arts Decoratifs of Paris and film direction in Le Fresnoy-Studio National des
Arts Contemporains, Tourcoing. He lives and works in Berlin. To name a few of
his works: Dammi i Colori (2005), Long Sorrow (2005), Intervista (1999),
Nocturnes - 1999, 1395 Days Without Red (2011). Sala has been part of the most
important international events, such as the European Biennial, Manifesta -
2000, Venice Biennial - 2003, Istanbul Biennial - 2003, Tirana Biennial - 2003 - 2009, Sidney Biennial -2006, Documenta 2012. He's also received many international
awards among which, Prix Gilles Dussein - 2000, Best Young Artist, Venice
Biennial - 2003, Absolut Award- 2011.
Anri Sala's works reflect a very special
perspective on how we see the world, a view that mixes reflections on history,
memory and instantaneous ephemeral consciousness, with an unparalleled
dedication and attention to the present. He has a unique talent for sharp and
accurate realisations, as well as a special ability to create installations and
spatial proposals which include sounds, images, sculptures, films or live
performances.
Long Sorrow, 2005, filmed on the eponymous public
housing estate in Berlin, is an enigmatic record of a performance orchestrated
by the artist. Sala invited noted free jazz musician Jemeel Moondoc to perform
while suspended outside the window of an empty apartment on the eighteenth
floor. Through details and close ups of the musician's eyes and facial
expressions we get a first hand experience of the adrenaline rush running
through his body. It's this rush that dictate his musical performance, while
its sound conveys the bodily experience of the architectonic space and its
dimensions. Suspending him in space and denying him the possibility to express
himself through words or human voice, opens up for a phenomenological relation
between the body and the space, a relation in which the analytic capacity of
human intelect is entirely reduced, while the brains has become merely a
mechanism that responds to the spatial stimuli percieved through every
extremity of the musician's body.
For the show at Stacion, Sala stages the
performance 3-2-1, 2011, in which French saxophonist Pierre Borel responds live
to Long Sorrow. 3-2-1 begins with Borel accompanying an audio recording of
Moondoc's improvisation with his own earlier performance on film, playing in
the garden area of Stacion, resulting thus in a 'trio': the film, the audio
recording and the live performance. Borel then plays live with the film Long
Sorrow in the inner space of Stacion, a 'duet', before finally performing a
solo after the film ends. 3-2-1 punctuates the fixed cycle of the show with an
improvised element, integrating the strands of film and performance that run
through Sala's work.
The performance 3-2-1 was first created for Anri
Sala's solo show at the Serpentine Gallery in London in 2011.
The exhibition of Anri Sala at Stacion - Center for
Contemporary Art Prishtina is supported by: Ambassade de France au Kosovo,
Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports of the Republic of Kosovo, Ministry of
Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Kosovo, Directorate for Culture, Youth and
Sports of the Municipality of Prishtina, Hotel Nartel, Arda Rei, Uje Rugove,
Technomarket, Europlakat, KTV, Klan Kosova, X-print, 3V studio and DZG.