>PREVIEW
JANET CARDIFF: FORTY PART MOTET
Runs until March 28
Illingworth Kerr Gallery (Alberta College of Art and Design)
Western religious music and contemporary art seem distant from each other as far as artistic practices go. There does not seem to be much common ground between such widely divergent genres. So it is quite strange to find the two worlds so comfortably aligned in Canadian artist Janet Cardiff’s Forty Part Motet.
Forty Part Motet was developed by Cardiff in response to the famous choral composition Spem in Alium by English composer Thomas Tallis (1505-1585). Spem in Alium is widely considered to be one of the most challenging choral pieces to perform or record, requiring 40 singers (eight of whom must be soprano) to execute a dense and intermingled harmonic structure. Cardiff’s interest in the piece goes well beyond an attention to technical expertise, though. Her focus is primarily conceptual. As she states in the exhibition’s didactic panel, "Most people experience (Spem in Alium) now in their living room in front of only two speakers, the spatial construction is lost in the mix. Even in a live concert, the audience is separated from the individual voices. I wanted to be able to… ‘climb inside’ the music, connecting with the separate voices." So Cardiff did just that. Not literally of course, but she used 40 individual microphones to capture not just the musical recording, but also the nuances of each singer as they performed the piece.
The result is an installation that not only replicates the sound of a live performance, but also effectively exceeds it. We do not simply hear the concert in stereo – we are treated to an immersive polyphonic experience. Voices surround us, extending the architectural space. Standing close to the speakers, the quiet breaths of the singers resonate even as we are overwhelmed with sound in all directions. Standing outside the gallery in the Alberta College of Art and Design atrium, the piece emanates through the walls in a way that seems to engulf and penetrate matter. It is a breathtakingly simple and effective means for capturing attention and utterly engrossing viewers.
Visually, the sparse layout of the piece also suggests total immersion. Inside the gallery, spotlights point toward two benches in the middle of the room where listeners ostensibly sit and absorb the soundscape around them. The benches almost become a stage to perform on, like an ancient amphitheatre or an intimate jazz club (you feel like you should be the one singing). Encircling the room and facing in toward the benches are 40 identical speakers on tripods that stand about a metre and a half tall. Each speaker has a length of cable that runs down to the floor and trails off behind a wall that separates the front and rear parts of the gallery. These speakers seem like surrogate singers waiting their turn to enter the chorus. Placing the audience at the centre of the performance with the speakers lining the walls seems like an odd organization of space. In fact, Spem in Alium is traditionally sung in this manner with the choir surrounding the audience. The effect is startling though, because the piece seems to take on a visceral quality that overwhelms the physical space.
This uncanny quality of being inside the artwork is reminiscent of Cardiff’s later work, The Paradise Institute. But where The Paradise Institute relied on intertwined narrative structures, which tended to be excessively contrived, Forty Part Motet successfully leads us into a world that is open-ended and can be experienced in many different ways. Most people seem to just sit in the centre of the piece and listen to the music, but if you do wander around, the encounter is almost hallucinatory. This sense of being able to choose numerous possible experiences is one of the strongest aspects of the work and the feeling it affords viewers is rare and exciting. |
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