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Experiments in Art and Music in Eastern Europe
Sounding The Body Electric: Experiments in Art and Music in Eastern Europe 1957–1984.
Sounding The Body Electric was an exhibition that was held in London (2013) and is now complete.
But thanks to the Internet, we can relive some experiences directly related to this exhibition especially with the CD excerpts on YouTube and a full PDF available for download.
Sounding The Body Electric: Experiments in Art and Music in Eastern Europe 1957–1984 is an exhibition on the first experimental approaches to sound and image in Eastern Europe during the 60s and the decades that followed, featuring artworks and recordings by Fluxus artist Milan Knižák, plus works by Sots-Artists Komar & Melamid, Hungarian artist Dóra Maurer and composer Zoltán Jeney.
In the aftermath of Stalinism, composers and artists in Eastern Europe were given new opportunities to experiment. New recording studios equipped with magnetic tape recorders and, later, synthesisers were established, first in Warsaw in 1957 and then throughout Eastern Europe. New and often challenging forms of music were produced in these laboratories of sound.
The connections between the visual arts and experimental music were closer in the 1960s than perhaps any time before or since. Sound and image combined in artists’ films, ‘happenings’ and sounding installations. Experimental forms of notation were also created to stimulate uninhibited musical expression.
The early happenings and actions of the 1960s were associated with intellectual freedom and reform. The exhilaration of experimentation declined during the decade and in the 1970s new critical forms of art emerged which associated sound with surveillance and censorship.
This exhibition explores both the optimism and the anxiety that was to be found in the experimental zone of art and music.
Sounds of Second Worlds PDF :
So yes, it is true, it is far from a last minute information but it is interesting nonetheless to listen all this thanks to YouTube videos.
Remember, all these sound experimentations could have stayed forever beyond our knowledge during this period.
The Berlin Wall erected in 1961 and destroyed in 1989 did not allow art and experimentation to reach the west.
At least not formally.
So here we have a rare sound testimony of a bygone era, a painful past but in which few artists have managed to experiment with the sound material.
More informations :
YOUTUBE