Opening Reception: January 17, 2012, 7 pm – 9 pm

Closing Recpetion: February 18, 2012, 7 pm – 9 pm

 

Storefront for Art and Architecture presented  007_Urban_Songline by Allard van Hoorn from January 18 – February 18, 2012. The exhibition was the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York and continued his series of works that explore the tradition of Songlines through a site-specific, newly commissioned work that literally transforms the Acconci/Holl façade into a sound instrument. 

 

The origin of Songlines [or Dreaming Tracks] can be traced to Australian indigenous systems for navigation and caretaking of land achieved by mapping space through the creation of music based on the topography of land. Throughout the duration of 007_Urban_Songline, van Hoorn created a series of Dreaming Tracks utilizing the changing morphology of the Storefront façade and the sounds emerging from the urban sonic context of the gallery.

 

The installation consisted of an interwoven network of strings throughout the façade and the gallery space that transformed the facade into an interactive, responsive musical instrument. Storefront’s façade contains 12 panels that pivot vertically or horizontally to open the entire length of the gallery directly onto the street. 

 

When a panel of the façade moved, the strings physically activated the totality of the façade and acoustically transformed the space of the gallery, making the different spatial transformations audible for visitors. Visitors became performers and were encouraged to manipulate the installation as they transcended the space, by moving the panels of the façade and stretching and playing the fields of strings with their bodies, thus constructing and transforming the acoustic and visual topography of Storefront. The project allowed the visitor to experiment on an architectural scale the connection between sound, tension, materiality and space. 

 

Orchestrating the sounds between urban context and installation content, van Hoorn strategically distributed a system of microphones throughout the different acoustic nodes around the gallery and its surroundings that all merged into a synthesized, real time Songline audible to visitors in the gallery. 

 

For instruction on how to play Storefront as a musical instrument throughout the exhibition, CLICK HERE.  The continuous Urban Songline produced throughout the length of the exhibition was constantly streamed live and recorded and available in the Storefront Sound Archive.

 

For the opening night of the exhibition, van Hoorn performed a concert of 7 Urban Songlines recorded in the space throughout the pre-opening days. During the closing event, which took place on February 18, 2012 at 7 PM, a live performance mixed different versions of the Storefront Songline that were then cut live into vinyl and given away.

 

About the Artist
Allard van Hoorn is a Dutch contemporary performance, sound and installation artist collaborating across the disciplines of architecture, music, theater and design. Van Hoorn choreographs scripts and scenarios for the urban environment and spatial structures investigating the relationship between shared domains and the possibilities of negotiating co-ownership and appropriation of public space.

 

Van Hoorn has presented six exhibitions and performances that trace the tradition of the Songlines, including exhibitions at Flux-S in Eindhoven, NL; Gasworks in London, UK; the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, NL; the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, Germany and the Gwangju Design Biennale. 007_Urban_Songline will be the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York. For a sample of the artists’ former Urban Songline projects, please visit the following link: http://www.allardvanhoorn.com/biography_002.asp.

 

Sound designed by Ryan Holsopple.

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007_Urban_Songline was supported in part, by public funds from the Netherlands Cultural Services and with the financial support of the Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam. Urban Songlines was realized with generous support from the Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture.

 

The opening reception was kindly sponsored by Grolsch.