performing and speaking at Metrónom, Barcelona

Metrònom. Fundació Rafael Tous d’Art Contemporani
C/ Fusina 9, Barcelona
Saturday 16 November 2019, 12:30 am

Metrònom was a significant space for the production and exhibition of intermedia art. This event presents a lecture and a performance by Seth Cluett to introduce the video/sound archive project recently initiated by AMEE. The archive includes a part of the extensive video documentation, sound recordings and photographs of Música a Metrònom (1985-2005), the festival of experimental music, improvisation and sound installation, created by Barbara Held, and co-curated with Agustí Fernández, Francisco López, Paul De Marinis, IBA and Bert Bongers.

12:30 am. The Loudspeaker as Screen: Mediating Sound Art Archives, a lecture by Seth Cluett.

Cluett’s lecture is focused on the critical potential of the loudspeaker’s contribution to aesthetic practices and the irreducibly mixed, multimodal condition of contemporary art practices. Highlighting the role of the loudspeaker in primary documentation and secondary criticism of archived sound art works, this talk will frame the problems and potentials inherent in the necessarily mediated experience of historical work documented by important presenters such as Metrònom. Cluett’s essay “The Loudspeaker in Art Practice: A Preliminary Taxonomy” is included in a book published recently by MIT Press and ZKM, Karlsruhe.

6–10 pm. Introduction to the video/sound archive.

The program includes selected iconic video/sound recordings from the AMEE Archive, such as documentation of historic performances at Metrònom, given by artists including Eliane Radige, Christian Marclay, Alvin Lucier, Jordi Benito and Agustí Fernández, in a dialogue with recent works by AMEE and Metrònom collaborators.

10 pm. From delivery to withdrawal (into implicit secrecy and silence #3), a performance by Seth Cluett.

Cluett’s performance is based on minor aberrations in space and time caused by corporal movement that might make us aware of the relationship between our bodies and the perceived world. In the work, loudspeakers play sine waves whose wavelengths are derived from the architectural layout of the space while a video shot using mirrored looking devices super-impose shifted visual information from the outside space to the audience.

Curated by Barbara Held and Víctor Aguado-Machuca, this event is promoted by Metrònom and AMEE (Spanish Association of Electroacoustic Music and Sound Art) with the support of Acción Cultural Española and INAEM (Instituto Nacional de las Artes Escénica y de la Música), as part of LOOP Barcelona. Special thanks to: Rafael Tous, Adolf Alcañiz and Ferran Conangla.