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Janet Cardiff

The Forty Part Motet
09.26.08 - 10.19.08
Exhibition — Couvent des Jacobins

Janet Cardiff, The Forty Part Motet, 2001, a polyphonic choir in the great hall of the Jacobins, © Le Printemps de septembre, photo Markus Tretter

Born in 1957 in Canada, she lives and works in Berlin.

 

Directed by: George Bures Miller.

Performed by the Salisbury cathedral choir.

Recording and postproduction : SoundMoves.

Production : Field Art Projects.

14 min, incl. 11 min of singing and 3 min of interruption.

 

Hearing voices: first and foremost, it is the use of sound in its various textures, and the human voice with city noises, which hallmark Janet Cardiff's plastic work. She came to notice, in particular, for her walks which started in the 1990s: acoustic fictions in which she draws the spectator into the reality of the city, led by a Walkman, an audio-guide or even a digital camera. This narrative art is also at work in huge acoustic-cum-schizophrenic installations such as the Paradise Institute , Special Jury Prize at the 2001 Venice Biennale, made in cooperation with her partner Georges Bures Miller.

 

What work will you be showing at le Printemps de septembre?

Usually, at a concert, you sit facing the orchestra, but with the sound piece The Forty Part Motet (2001), based on a piece of choral music from the English Renaissance (Spem in Alium by Thomas Tallis, 1573) I want the person listening to have the experience of a piece of music from the viewpoint of the singers. And I want him to move across the room, which will help him to be in an intimate relation with the voices. This also reveals the on-going, developing construction that any piece of music is. I am interested in the way sound physically structures space and how the onlooker finds his way through this space which is at once physical and virtual. I've put the loudspeakers in an oval all around the room so that the person listening can really sense the sculptural construction of the piece of music composed by Tallis. You can hear the sound shift from one part of the choir to another, bouncing to and fro, echoing, and when the waves of sound reach you and all the singers can be heard simultaneously, you experience a sublime feeling.

The Forty Part Motet by Janet Cardiff is a production of the Field Art Projects, in partnership with the Arts Council of England, the Salisbury Festival, the Baltic Gateshead contemporary art centre, the New Art Gallery Walsall and the NOW Festival Nottingham.