weightshift

Weightshift (audiovisual performance, 2007)
4 synthesizers, 2 laptops, microphones, 5.52 kilograms of metal weights and video, 15’

“28. Once the idea of the piece is established in the artist’s mind and the final form is decided, the process is carried out blindly. There are many side effects that the artist cannot imagine. These may be used as ideas for new works.” Sol Lewitt, 35 Sentences on Conceptual Art, 1969

The primary material and tool for the Weightshift is the measured weight of all four orchestral scores for Richard Wagner’s tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen (series of editions released in 1983 by Dover Publications). The aggregate weight of the tetralogy (5.52 kilograms) in the form of metal weights is slowly (langsam und schmachtend) placed upon electronic keyboards, pressing the keys that correspond to the harmonic pattern from the beginning of Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde – the material several times employed in my earlier works. Each instrument has a matching section of the tetralogy, or, to be more precise – the weight of the score of that section, which is ‘transformed’ from its static state into the sound and three-dimensional sphere, thus implementing an original interpretation of musical text and demonstrating the process of artistic de-dematerialisation (restoring from dematerialized into the material state – supposing we treat sound as something material). This process is extended by real-time sound transformation performed live by guest sound artists, adapting this highly compendious version of The Ring for the acoustics of the hall and the festival context.

An obelisk for the epic, or What weights on Artūras Bumšteinas

Richard Wagner‘s opuses are epic music par exellence. The epic usually has considerable symbolic weight. In Wagner’s case, not only symbolic; as Artūras Bumšteinas reveals in his new multimedia work Weightshift, the score of Wagner’s monumental Der Ring des Nibelungen tetralogy weighs as much as 5.52 kg. Surely, that’s a bit too much for contemporary, especially experimental electronic music, so Bumšteinas decides to shift this weight. On what? Well, on what else, if not on the synthesizer, an epitome of electronic music of sorts. The artist converts the score’s weight to metal bars and arranges them in stacks on the keys of four synthesizers in such a way that the resulting sustained cluster of sound matches the harmonic pattern employed by Wagner in the opening of Tristan und Isolde. At the same time, the weight pressing down the keys of each synthesizer corresponds to the weight of one of the tetralogy’s four parts. The graphic scheme of the performed transformation, projected on the wall, further explicates the experiment.

One could interpret this as sonic numerology or talk about the symbols’ and numbers’ conversion into sound, but after seeing the Pervert’s Guide to Cinema with contemporary philosophy’s sex symbol Slavoj Zizek it’s tempting to turn to good old psychoanalysis. The sound produced by the four synthesizers is like a concentrate of Wagner’s music, condensed to almost unbearable density. This sustained, heavyweight (weighing precisely 5.52 kilos and pressing on the listeners’ ears with all of its mass) drone resembles a colossal monument. Let’s imagine that this acoustic monolith symbolizes the epic might of Wagner’s oeuvre. It is symbolic that the stacked metal bars pressing down the synthesizers’ keys resemble monuments as well. Yet at the same both these micro towers and the synthesizers’ sound resemble an obelisk – a funerary monument. And what, then, is the projected precise scheme that demystifies Wagner’s enigmatic tetralogy, if not an obituary to the great German’s epic romantism? It appears that Artūras Bumšteinas has announced the ultimate and irreversible death of epic art with his Weightshift. Zizek would not hesitate to conclude that with this work Bumšteinas has killed his father Wagner (in the psychoanalytical superego sense). Such a bold statement could be supported by the fact that in the final part of Weightshift Wagner’s sonic concentrate is already “wrapped” in electronic glitches and noises typical of Bumšteinas’ electronic music, as if neutralized and naturalized by the latter.