Installation und Live Performance:
Dorit Chrysler
CALDER PLAYS THEREMIN

 
  1. 9 March 23

    11am – 9pm Video Installation / 9pm Concert

    Location: KW Institute for Contemporary Art, 4th floor

    Registration via reservation@kw-berlin.de

 

<p>Jake Marsiglia with kind permission of Calder Foundation</p>

Jake Marsiglia with kind permission of Calder Foundation

 

Calder, the iconic American sculptor and mobilist once said, “The underlying sense of form in my work has been the system of the universe (…) the idea of detached bodies floating in space.” Leon Theremin, the pioneering inventor of the only musical instrument played without physical contact, offered music through the “free movement of the hands in space.”

For Berlin-based composer, sound artist, and thereminist Dorit Chrysler, those ideas cried out to be united in a posthumous collaboration by these two men. The theoretical synergy between Calder’s ever-changing mobiles, turning and shifting endlessly through the air, and Theremin’s antennas, ready to receive and translate into music the stimulus of any nearby moving object in the air, was irresistible.  Chrysler conceived of a kind of music of the spheres—Calder’s heavenly bodies orbiting within the electromagnetic fields of Theremin’s space control instruments, setting in motion a sort of Rube Goldberg machine that composes music as it goes.

 

Join us at KW for the launch of Dorit Chrysler’s new album Calder Plays Theremin (Special vinyl edition released by Fridman Gallery and NY Theremin Society, 2023/ binaural audiocassette released by KinshipBerlin), featuring a video installation and live performance by Chrysler. Presenting as a multi-movement orchestra for the theremin, Calder Plays Theremin originated from a sound piece commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in conjunction with the exhibition Alexander Calder: Modern from the Start.

 

Dorit Chrysler is a Berlin-based composer and sound artist, and founder of the NY Theremin Society. Her work explores new applications of the theremin instrument in various mediums. She has been awarded the Austrian State Stipend in Composition 2023 and earned her Master’s Degree of Musicology in Vienna. Chrysler has performed worldwide (e.g. Coachella, Roskilde, Lincoln Center) and has written for film and the theater. Her compositions have been collected by the Guggenheim and Moderna Museet, andhas presented work at MoMA, Venice Biennale, and Klang Fest. Chrysler has collaborated with the San Francisco Symphony, CERN, Laurie Spiegel, Herb Deutsch, Elliot Sharp, Trentemøller, Alva Noto, and Gaite Lyrique. She has produced a ten-piece orchestra performance for the LA Disney Hall, and is the founder of Dame Electric, a festival featuring female pioneers of electronic music. Her recordings appear on over twenty releases by labels such as InMyRoomRecords (DE), The Prurience Factory (US), Monika Enterprise (DE), PlagDichNicht (AU), PlasticTray Records (US), and Mute.

 

Sponsors of the video and record: ACF, MoogMusic, City of Graz, CalderFoundation, LandStyria

 

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Jake Marsiglia with kind permission of Calder Foundation
Jake Marsiglia with kind permission of Calder Foundation
 
 
 
 
Jake Marsiglia with kind permission of Calder Foundation
Jake Marsiglia with kind permission of Calder Foundation