Primal Energies and Sonic Projections

Bill Fontana, the American sound artist active on the international stage for decades, comes to Graz with a solo exhibition and the re-enactment Sonic Projections from Schloßberg 38/88/2020.

As a former student of John Cage, Dick Higgens and Alison Knowles, his work today stands for a continuation of radical concepts of the 1970s. Fontana will show two live installations created for the location, one in the Kunsthaus Graz, the other in the city. In the domed room of the Kunsthaus Graz, he enables the visitor to experience renewable energies in the room as a physical intervention, by means of multi-dimensional soundscapes and picture montages, while in the urban space the conciliatory tones of nature found in the re-enactment of Sonic Projections sound forth. In 1988, with this sound work as part of the steirischer herbst festival, Fontana sent out into the city from the Schlossberg sounds from around the world, and their urban echo through all of Austria via the ORF. The re-enactment uses new technologies and is devoted to today’s city on the acoustic level. As a recurring sound it thus functions as a means of orientation to time and space, as a trigger of memory and deliberate perception, plumbing what is currently an ever-more delicate construct of urban needs and strains.

More info: https://www.museum-joanneum.at/en/kunsthaus-graz/exhibitions/exhibitions/events/event/8853/bill-fontana-3

Image: Bill Fontana, "Primal Sonic Visions", 2018, © Bill Fontana