3-2-1...Long Sorrow
Anri Sala

Curated by Edi Muka
Opening: 26 June 2012, 20:00

With the 3-2-1 performance featuring free jazz musician Pierre Borel, responding on saxophone to the recording of Jemeel Moondoc.

26 June 2012 - 4 August 2012

Artist talk with Anri Sala
27 June 2012 at 20:00


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.