Ari Benjamin Meyers

Name: Composing Reality
Start: 2024-08-05T00:00:00+02:00
End: 2024-08-17T23:59:59+02:00
Location: Hohensalzburg Fortress

Composing Reality

5–17 August 2024

Hohensalzburg Fortress

Rehearsing Philadelphia, The Public Orchestra of Philadelphia (2022), photo: Conrad Erb

[Slider obove]
Unless, Berliner Festspiele, 2023, photo: Camille Blake

Application

Media
Performance, sound, music, social practice

Location
Hohensalzburg Fortress

Teaching languages
English (German possible)

What to bring
A willingness to perform, sing or move

Requirements
None

Maximum number of participants
20

Participation fee
670 Euro (reduced 495 Euro)

Composition in its broadest sense can encompass not only all forms of music and sound, but also transdisciplinary practices such as the performative and social. In this course we will explore together the potential of using compositional methods to bring together and organize different elements of artistic, theoretical and social forms and use that as a basis to create new performative works, including work in the public sphere. There will also be a focus on rehearsal and scoring as artistic mediums in their own right.

We will do this through various performative exercises and tasks - both sounding and unsounding - starting in our given space and slowly moving out from there into the public realm, thereby defining for ourselves new extended areas of action and production as well as new relationships between rehearsal and performance, performer and audience, public and private.

Over the course of the two weeks, the participating students will transform into an ensemble of composer-performers. We will work together as a whole, in smaller groups and individually. At the end of the course, we will determine together the form our scores will take, where we publicly show them, and how we will activate the resulting compositions.

To compose reality, rehearse the future, and activate both through a score: this will be the focus of the course. Put another way: the composing, rehearsing, and scoring of a moment, of a situation, of social relationships, of a context, of a body, of bodies.

Ari Benjamin Meyers, born 1972 in the US is an artist and composer living and working in Berlin. His internationally presented works explore structures and processes that redefine the performative, social, and ephemeral nature of music as well as the relationship between performer and audience. Recently he has focused on the public and civic spheres and large-scale communal performances. His performances Unless and Forecast (LX23) are currently on tour in Europe. Meyer’s works have been shown internationally in institutions and festivals including at Berliner Festspiele (2023); Festival d’Avignon (2023); Hamburger Kunsthalle (2022); Theatertreffen, Berlin (2022); Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach (2022); Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2022); MAAT, Lisbon (2021); Beaufort Triennial (2021); Neues Museum Nürnberg (2020); Schering Stiftung, Berlin (2020); VAC Foundation, Moscow (2019); OGR Torino (2019); MCA Santa Barbara (2019); Frac Franche-Comté (2019); Pinault Collection, Punta della Dogana, Venice (2019); Liverpool Biennial (2018); Nowy Teatr, Warsaw (2018); Public Art Munich (2018); Witte de With, Rotterdam (2018); Sonic Somatic Festival, Florence (2018); Biennale de Lyon (2017); Spring Workshop, Hong Kong (2017); Lenbachhaus, Munich (2017). Upcoming presentations include his newest film Marshall Allen, 99, Astronaut for the exhibition Nebula as a collateral event of the Venice Biennial, and a solo exhibition featuring Kunsthalle for Music at Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach.

Photo: Sandra Meier