magdalena hill

Varese 360

Two-night performance of the composer Edgard Varèse’s complete works with visual components by Gary Hill, organized and co-produced by Holland Festival, Asko|Schönberg, Festival d’Automne à Paris, Southbank Centre London, Salle Pleyel and Radio France.

This video component is an excerpt from Ameriques which was part of life performance Varese 360 by Edgar Varese and Gary Hill with full orchestra and multiple projections in Amsterdam and Paris.

"[...] It can’t be a matter of simply putting images to music like some kind of backdrop, visual wallpaper or eye support, full of itself and meandering through the corruption of visuality. There is the desire but nonetheless a struggle to avoid certain sets of images: environmental, gaseous, amorphous, swirling, compositions with shapes, designs, patterns, the big and meaningful—in general, that which has become music/image clichés. Instead, there has to be a kind of synaptic necessity that tugs, bringing one inside the sound NOW, wrenching us from our givens about the experience of “music.”And surely the images cannot just be on, so to speak. When we see something it can’t be taken for granted. The world of sight should be scrutinized when under the gaze of such a precise and pointed sound. Perhaps the images play a kind of game of hide and seek with the sound…"

Gary Hill 2009