Would you like a sound cake and invisible acoustic presents? We have celebrated Art’s 1,000,058th Birthday

25. leden 2021

After a long time, due to the Covid-19 restrictions, the celebration was moved into Czech Radio Vltava’s studio to be broadcast. On Sunday, 17 January, at 8 p.m. the birthday programme featured an acoustic collage consisting of live satellite contributions from all over Europe: Berlin, Lausanne, Baden-Baden, Warsaw, Vienna, etc.

The birthday programme was started by a live performance based on interactive online collaboration of several musicians from all over Europe. The Freq_wave Project, conceived by Swedish artist and curator Carl Michael von Hausswolff, is focused on water as an element. It is also a reminder that our current health and economic crisis is inseparably connected with the long-time climate chaos, social inequalities, and injustice done to the environment. This sound project which connects different places shows how art and culture may reveal the complexity of water degradation and pollution. In the Prague studio, this performance was joined by musicians George Cremaschi, Barry Wan and Polina Khatsenka. The total of twelve musicians (see here) were joined by the duo DARK MORPH comprised of the project creator Carl Michael von Hausswolff and Jón Þór Jónsi Birgisson, who is well known as the leader of the Sigur Ros.

A synthesizer solo called onenone was played by Jan Burian, who adapted his composition so that it cannot be played in the same way again. He developed synthesizer sounds that get randomly changed under the player’s hands on the keys. That makes the musician respond immediately and everything may be different in the next moment. He adds his artistic manifesto to the composition:

No one is no one! Oneness is not once!” (The manifesto of everything, Jan Burian, January 2021.)

The tradition of global Art’s Birthday parties was founded on 17 January 1963. One of the Fluxus community of artists, Robert Filliou, then said that art had been born 1,000,000 years before when a prehistoric artist threw a dry sponge into a vessel with water. Ten years later he celebrated art’s 1,000,010th birthday at the Neue Galerie, Aachen. After Filliou’s death in 1987 artists began to celebrate this holiday in the spirit of the Eternal Network, a permanent interconnection of artists all around the world.

The party takes place in different parts of the world. Artists join the idea and bring their birthday presents, which we can share thanks to the interconnection through communication media. The global Art’s Birthday party tries to create a relaxed atmosphere and commemorate Filliou’s dream of the Eternal Network of artists.

Czech Radio first joined ART'S BIRTHDAY in 2005 as one of almost twenty public institutions from all over Europe, under the name of a group of programme-makers and producers Euroradio Ars Acustica.

author: Ladislav Železný

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