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Calvert 22 presents Sounding the Body Electric: Experiments in Art and Music in Eastern Europe 1957–1984

Calvert 22 presents Sounding the Body Electric: Experiments in Art and Music in Eastern Europe 1957–1984 an exhibition on view 26 June–25 August 2013 .

Zygmunt Krauze, Henryk Morel, Cezary Szubartowski, and Grzegorz Kowalski, 5x, 1966. Audio-visual performance; the Foksal Gallery, Warsaw, 1966. Courtesy of the Foksal Gallery. Photo: A. Zborski.
Zygmunt Krauze, Henryk Morel, Cezary Szubartowski, and Grzegorz Kowalski, 5x, 1966. Audio-visual performance; the Foksal Gallery, Warsaw, 1966. Courtesy of the Foksal Gallery. Photo: A. Zborski.

The connections between the visual arts and experimental music were closer in the 1960s and 1970s 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.

Eastern European artists and composers were at the forefront of these new experiments with sound and yet their achievements have never been recorded until now. Sounding the Body Electric: Experiments in Art and Music in Eastern Europe 1957-1984, an exhibition at Calvert 22 in London, organised in conjunction with the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, fills in a missing chapter in the history of Sound Art.

The first experiments in sound were produced during the euphoric period known as ‘the Thaw’ after Stalin’s death. 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 by pioneers of electronic music like Krzysztof Penderecki were produced in these laboratories of sound.

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.

More than 30 works will be on display at Calvert 22. Key works include:

–Destroyed records, artworks and recordings made by splitting and combining recordings on vinyl by Fluxus artist Milan Knižák in the mid-1960s
–Acoustic drawings, made by Czech artist Milan Grygar in the early 1970s, in which the process of creating the image was both a performance and the creation of a new piece of music; Grygar’s work has never been exhibited in London before
–Just Transistor Radios, a critical intervention into broadcast radio in the People’s Republic of Poland in 1970 by artist Krzysztof Wodiczko and composer Szábolcs Esztényi
–Music Within and Outside, an exercise in self-surveillance by Moscow conceptualists Collective Actions, using photography and reel-to-reel recording equipment in 1984
–graphic scores in the form of contemporary collage by phonopoetic artist Katalin Ladik, made in Yugoslavia in the 1970s
–Music Code Passport by Sots-Artists Komar & Melamid, a 1976 composition based on the internal passport required by all citizens in the Soviet Union
–Kalah, a film and installation made in 1980 by Hungarian artist Dorá Maurer with avant-garde composer Zoltán Jeney, using chance operations.

Artists:
Walerian Borowczyk, Collective Actions, Andrzej Dłużniewski, Szábolcs Esztényi, Bulat Galeyev, Milan Grygar, Zofia & Oskar Hansen, Zoltán Jeney, Milan Knížák, Grzegorz Kowalski, Zygmunt Krauze, Komar & Melamid, Katalin Ladik, Jan Lenica, Dóra Maurer, Henryk Morel, Vladan Radovanović, Józef Robakowski, Eugeniusz Rudnik, Bogusław Schaeffer,Cezary Szubartowski, László Vidovszky, and Krzysztof Wodiczko

Curated by David Crowley and Daniel Muzyczuk

Calvert 22 Foundation
22 Calvert Avenue
London E2 7JP
Nearest tube: Shoreditch High St / Old St / Liverpool St
Hours: Wednesday–Sunday noon–6pm
Admission free
T +44 (0) 20 7613 2141
[email protected]
www.calvert22.org