Pause: Billy Bultheel & James Richards
Workers in Song

07.–09.06.24

Workers in Song is the result of a collaboration between composer Billy Bultheel (b. 1987, BE) and visual artist James Richards (b. 1983, UK), who found one another based on an expansive approach towards their disciplines. Bringing together archival film and music with newly created footage and scores, their performance is haunted by the histories of occult photography and spectral music and is replete with references to their previous works as well as more quotidian pleasures such as online hook-ups, subcultures of bygone eras, and the darker dimensions of romantic subjectivity.

Conceived as an open-ended, modular structure, Bultheel and Richards present newly produced music and film material, and place these into dialogue with poems, films, and scores by other artists—without subsuming any part into a uniform whole. As such, the artists offer a glimpse into the references and sources of inspiration and appreciation that have imprinted themselves on them. Situated in KW’s main hall, Workers in Song turns it into a musical Frankenstein, taking apart the seamless and unified apparatus of the cinema or chamber concert. Both lusciously sentimental and abrasive with distortion, many elements insistently return to the porous line between inside and outside, the self and others, the body and the world.

Artists / Directors / Producers: Billy Bultheel & James Richards
Performers: Alexey Kokhanov (voice, piano), Adam Sinclaire (flute), Alina Anufrienko (cello), Clara Levy (violin), Julie Michael (viola)
Sound engineers: Francisco Petrucci and Christophe Albertijn

Curator: Léon Kruijswijk
Curatorial Assistant: Nikolas Brummer

Installationsansicht der Performance Pause: Billy Bultheel & James Richards – Workers in Song in den KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin 2024; Foto: Frank Sperling.
Installationsansicht der Performance Pause: Billy Bultheel & James Richards – Workers in Song in den KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin 2024; Foto: Frank Sperling.
Installationsansicht der Performance Pause: Billy Bultheel & James Richards – Workers in Song in den KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin 2024; Foto: Frank Sperling.
Installationsansicht der Performance Pause: Billy Bultheel & James Richards – Workers in Song in den KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin 2024; Foto: Frank Sperling.
Installationsansicht der Performance Pause: Billy Bultheel & James Richards – Workers in Song in den KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin 2024; Foto: Frank Sperling.
Installationsansicht der Performance Pause: Billy Bultheel & James Richards – Workers in Song in den KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin 2024; Foto: Frank Sperling.
Installationsansicht der Performance Pause: Billy Bultheel & James Richards – Workers in Song in den KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin 2024; Foto: Frank Sperling.

Workers in Song is the result of a collaboration between composer Billy Bultheel (b. 1987, BE) and visual artist James Richards (b. 1983, UK), who found one another based on an expansive approach towards their disciplines. Bringing together archival film and music with newly created footage and scores, their performance is haunted by the histories of occult photography and spectral music and is replete with references to their previous works as well as more quotidian pleasures such as online hook-ups, subcultures of bygone eras, and the darker dimensions of romantic subjectivity.

Workers in Song questions the boundaries between liveness and the prerecorded, between presence and absence, between memories, ghosts, and the archive. Conceived as an open-ended, modular structure, Workers in Song operates as a constantly evolving organism, which adapts to the specific context of each presentation. The version at KW considers the vastness of its main hall and plays with those characteristics that make it distinct from yet another interchangeable white cube. Informed by the early days of cinema, when silent films were conceived to be presented with live music, and more contemporary forms including mixtapes or expanded cinema events, Bultheel and Richards present the dynamic musical score as a setting for a series of performative and filmic events. Newly produced music and film material—sending viewers through nocturnal landscapes and dystopian, post-industrial interiors—is put into dialogue with poems, films, and scores by other artists—without subsuming any part into a uniform whole. As such, the artists offer a glimpse into the references and sources of inspiration and appreciation that have imprinted themselves on them.

Workers in Song takes apart the seamless and unified apparatus of the cinema or chamber concert and turns itself into a musical Frankenstein. The work’s episodic structure invites viewers to bring their own experiences to the table and connect the dots, allowing each element to smudge and blur one’s perception. Both lusciously sentimental and abrasive with distortion, many elements insistently return to the porous line between inside and outside, the self and others, the body and the world.

Short biographies of the participating artists

James Richards lebt und arbeitet in Berlin und London. Er forscht zu Themen wie Besessenheit, Begehren und Technologie unter anderem durch Archivrecherchen, die Auseinandersetzung mit vorgefundenem Filmmaterial und umfangreiche Kooperationen. In seinen Arbeiten setzt er sich mit der unaufhaltsamen Bilderflut des 21. Jahrhunderts auseinander und schafft einen Raum, in dem persönliche Politik und digitale Materialität aufeinandertreffen.

Die jüngsten Einzelausstellungen des Künstlers waren Internal Litter, Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin (2022); When We Were Monsters, Haus Mödrath, Kerpen (2021); Alms for the Birds, Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2020); SPEED 2, Malmö Konsthall (2019), und SPEED, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (2018). Zu seinen Gruppenausstellungen gehören Penumbra, Fondazione In Between Art Film, Venedig (2022); The Botanical Mind, Camden Art Centre, London (2020); die Whitney Biennale, New York (2017), und Less Than Zero, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2016). Im Jahr 2017 vertrat Richards Wales auf der 57. Biennale von Venedig mit der Ausstellung Music for the Gift; 2024 erhielt er den Preis der Nationalgalerie Berlin.

Billy Bultheel lebt und arbeitet in Berlin und Brüssel. Seine Arbeit als experimenteller Komponist und Performancekünstler verbindet zeitgenössische Komposition mit Techniken und Traditionen aus der polyphonen Musik des europäischen Mittelalters und der Renaissance. Seine Musik realisiert er in Performances und Installationen, die häufig ortsspezifisch sind und die Beschränkungen des Konzertsaals hinter sich lassen, um ein neues Terrain für musikalische Erfahrungen zu erschließen. Musiker*innen werden bei ihm zu Performer*innen, die sich durch Klanglandschaften bewegen und mit Architektur, Skulpturen und maßgefertigten Instrumenten interagieren.

Zu den jüngsten Projekten des Künstlers gehören The Thiefʼs Journal, Berlin Atonal (2023); Workers in Song, WIELS, Brüssel (2023); Mt. Analogue, Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, Paris (2023); Athens Songs I–IV, 7. Athens Biennale, Athen (2021); UNTER, Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin (2021); Songs for the Contract, folia.app (2021); The Minutes of Olomouc, PAF, Olomouc (2020), und When Doves Cry, Schinkel Pavillon Berlin (2019). Bultheel studierte Komposition am Institut für Sonologie in Den Haag, Niederlande, sowie Performance und Choreografie am Institut für Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft in Gießen.

Performance Credits
Artists / Directors / Producers: Billy Bultheel & James Richards
Performers: Alexey Kokhanov (voice, piano), Adam Sinclaire (flute), Alina Anufrienko (cello), Clara Levy (violin), Julie Michael (viola)
Sound engineers: Christophe Albertijn, Francisco Petrucci
Curator: Léon Kruijswijk
Curatorial Assistant: Nikolas Brummer

Film Credits
Filmed appearances: Sebastian de la Cour (bariton), Sara Neidorf (percussion), Adam Sinclaire (flute)
DOP: Tom Rosenberg
Second camera: Milan Daemgen
Sound recordist: Simone Antonioni
Sound Design: Max Bloching
Key grip: Braden Harris
Production Assistants: Lea Hopp, Sinaida Michalskaja
Film locations: anorak, bplus.xyz, Berlin
Production manager: Johanna Markert

Billy Bultheel and James Richards, *Workers in Song*, June 2023, Batalha Centro de Cinema, Photo: Paulo Cunha Martins.

Part of project: Pause series

The Pause series of KW Institute for Contemporary Art allowed for an ephemeral yet deep engagement with a single artwork in order to draw and question relationships between the past, present, and future. A Pause acted as a punctuation of KW’s regular program by presenting an artwork for a short period of time in between exhibition cycles, working with this state of in-between. Pause projects were predominantly commissioned or reworked pieces that shifted between or even merged the disciplines of performance, installation, video, and sonic work.

Overview
2017–2024

Pause: The Noa Eshkol Chamber Dance Group
25/27 August 23

Pause: Alexis Blake
Crack Nerve Boogie Swerve
27–29 January 23

Pause: Lydia Ourahmane
sync
1–2 October 22

Pause: Tobias Spichtig
Die Matratzen
19–23 January 22

Pause: Michele Rizzo
REACHING
1–3 October 21

Pause: Archivio Conz Collection
Broken Sounds / Remote Music—Prepared Pianos
16–19 January 20

Pause: Every Ocean Hughes
Help the Dead
24–25 August 19

Pause: Emma Hedditch
+49 30 243459-53
18–19 May 19

Pause: Jimmy Robert (After Ian White)
Joie noire
19–20 January 19

Pause: Evelyn Taocheng Wang
What is he afraid of?
27–30 September 18

Pause: AA Bronson
Garten der Lüste
26–29 April 18

Pause: Ericka Beckman
Super-8 Trilogy
18–21 January 18

Pause: Margaret Honda
Spectrum Reverse Spectrum
18–20 August 17

Pause: Anthony McCall
Line Describing a Cone
27–30 April 17

Co-commissioned by WIELS Centre for Contemporary Art, Batalha Centro de Cinema, Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, and KW Institute for Contemporary Art.

Funded by the Government of Flanders

Supported by

With thanks to the Estate of Warren Sonbert and Gartenberg Media Enterprises for the screening permission of Warren Sonbert’s work.

Pause: Billy Bultheel & James Richards
Workers in Song

Curatorial Introduction

Artist Biographies

Part of project: Pause series

Overview
2017–2024

Pause: Billy Bultheel & James Richards Workers in Song

Curatorial Introduction

Artist Biographies

Part of project: Pause series

Overview 2017–2024

Pause: Billy Bultheel & James Richards
Workers in Song

Overview
2017–2024