ARTPROJX SPACE
AURA SATZ
9 July - 16 August 2008
Automamusic
film photography drawing
PREVIEW WEDNESDAY 9 JULY 6-9pm
Automamusic
Aura Satz’s ‘Automamusic’ project has at its core a film about mechanical music. Intricate views of self-playing violins, accordions, drums, pianolas, and orchestrions are offset by scenes in which floating musical instruments are played by invisible hands. The film highlights the similarities between the beginnings of musical reproduction in the 19th century and spiritualist invocations of the dead through sound. ‘Automamusic’ breathes the ghost back into the machine, inhabiting the figurative space between sound and source, when music had not yet become abstracted into the grooves of the gramophone record. In addition to the series of hand-printed cibachrome photographs which recall spiritualist photography, the exhibition includes drawings inspired by early patents for mechanical or hybrid musical instruments.
The film ‘Automamusic’ was developed with support from Film and Video Umbrella, funded by Arts Council England and Artsadmin, with kind assistance Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network and a special thanks to the Museum of Music Automatons, Seewen, Switzerland.
Aura Satz
Aura Satz completed a theory/practice PhD at the Slade School of Fine Art in 2002, where she later held a Henry Moore Foundation Post-doctoral Sculpture Fellowship (2002-04). She has performed, exhibited and screened her work nationally and internationally, including FACT (Liverpool), Site Gallery (Sheffield), Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea di Trento (Italy), De La Warr Pavilion (Bexhill-on-Sea), the Zentrum Paul Klee (Switzerland), Whitechapel Gallery, the Victoria & Albert Museum, The Photographer’s Gallery, Tate Britain, Beaconsfield Gallery (London). She has taught at the Slade, Central Saint Martin’s, and the History of Art Department of UCL, and been invited to speak at venues such as the Henry Moore Institute, Baltic, the Hayward Gallery, Chelsea School of Art and Goldsmiths College. Since 2004 she has been a fellow at the London Consortium, where she currently teaches. Aura Satz is supported by Artsadmin.
‘Automamusic’ has led to the creation of an Automatic Ensemble which will premiere in Basel (Switzerland) in January 2009, and includes as its core members Aura Satz and musician Aleks Kolkowski.
Weds 16 July 6.30-8.30pm
Andrew Renton (art critic/curator and Director of the Curatorial Programme, Goldsmiths) in conversation with Aura Satz on the withdrawal of authorship in relation to sound, sound technology and sound art, with live mechanical music performance by Aura Satz. RSVP required to info@artprojxspace.com
Aura Satz’s solo sound installation ‘GLISSOLALIA’ (Beaconsfield’s third annual Soundtrap commission) is showing at Beaconsfield Gallery until the 20th July. www.beaconsfield.ltd.uk
Automamusic at Artprojx Space has been extended to Saturday 15 August. The Gallery is open normal times and days through July and by appointment throughout August.