Traces 2015


Installation view, Viva Arte Viva, 57. Venice Biennial, 2017
3-channel video installation, HD video, each audio channel mono, each film 6 min, dimensions variable
(photo credit: Frank Kleinbach)

Installation view, Kubus Sparda Kunstpreis, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, 2015
(photo credit: Frank Kleinbach)

Video still




On three separate projection surfaces, Aladağ creates a large-scale
sound-and-image portrait of the city of Stuttgart, the place she spent
her childhood and adolescence. Here we encounter, for instance, an
accordion that plays as it unfolds along the length of a lamppost, or a
frame drum that rolls loudly through a park landscape. A flute trills
asit sails off into the sky with a balloon; the chestnuts in a chestnut
tree play a gong and a violin turns on a merry-go-round. Traces
is fascinating especially in moments of the orchestrated interaction of
only partially controllable sounds. Are sound and image coming together
here to tell a tale? As surprisingly as a symphonic interplay seems to
arise, it disintegrates just as quickly back into cacophony. The artist
has neither designed a soundscape of pure noise, nor has she composed an
interpretive piece about the city. Rather, Aladağ has invented a
remarkable hybrid. The most disparate urban situations become the
players in an orchestra. Rocking horses in the pedestrian zone and the
slopes of vineyards, downhills on the main street and a carousel in a
playground constitute the ensemble that, under Aladağ’s direction,
performs an audio rendition of their city on the accordion, drum, flute
and violin – and elicits wholly unexpected possibilities from each
classical instrument.