Blueprint | Seism
by Justin Bennett and Pascale-Sophie Kasparis
14 March – 11 April 2015
Opening: Friday 13 March, 5 – 8 pm with live performance!
Gemak The Hague, NL
GEMAK presents the experimental exhibition project, BLUEPRINT | SEISM, of Justin Bennett (UK/ NL) and Pascale-Sophie Kaparis (FR). Last year the initial stages of Bennett’s city-mapping research and Kaparis’ research involving intimate processing of traumatic experiences in the brain (‘mental shapes’) were presented at Gallery Maurits van de Laar. Now, the ‘unwrapped’ sequel to this unique duo project is shown at GEMAK; ambitious, layered and experimental. The artists will both engage in a dialogue with the GEMAK space, search for mutual connections in their work and interact with musicians, who will react to the artistic work through improvisation.
Central to Justin Bennett’s presentation is the film project-in-progress Blueprint. Blueprint, made in close collaboration with a number of improvising musicians, combines hand-drawn animated city-maps and stenciled texts with a live soundtrack. During the opening there will be performances (starting at 6:30 pm) by the Amsterdam based MAZE-ensemble, with an improvisation on Bennett’s animation/visual score. The performance will be recorded so that it can be heard for the duration of the exhibition. Another version will be performed at the finissage.
Blueprint asks questions to the musicians and the audience about the links between social, urban and musical structures. The context of Blueprint is widened by the inclusion of two older works. City of Progress is another animation, this time accompanied by a spoken text which touches on the roles of architects, developers, artists and the military in urban planning. Stimmung is a sound installation documenting the intervention of the audience during a Karlheinz Stockhausen concert at the Holland Festival of 1969. We hear the music being interrupted as the audience “join in” with the musicians. The concert is stopped but then a discussion starts over music, politics and audience participation. Around these three audio-visual pieces, Bennett shows a selection of sketches and related source material for Blueprint and the other works.
BLUEPRINT | SEISM is een GEMAK project i.s.m. Galerie Maurits van de Laar | A project of GEMAK in collaboration with Maurits van de Laar Gallery.