An Ode to James Joyce's Finnegans Wake - Finissage, reading and concert
An Ode to James Joyce's Finnegans Wake Finissage, reading and concert
On the last day of this exhibition of Brian O'Doherty's work, it is James Joyce's birthday (the 138th to be precise). Brian O'Doherty is an avid reader of this Irish writer, using his literature as an important reference to (and place-holder of) both their home country: Ireland. It points to the shared experience of having left it, too. For O'Doherty, Joyce's brilliant use of the (expanded) English language has been as much of an annoyance as a joy: the artist, who also writes novels, knows to appreciate it all too well. He has made rope drawing installations as commentary to the unsettling, but very much true-to-life experience of the reading, especially of Joyce's last work, Finnegans Wake, published in 1939. One of these has been on view in the Van Abbemuseum's downstairs library space. After this day, it will only remain a memory. The exhibition has aimed to bring together O'Doherty's multi-disciplinary practice. James Joyce's late text asks to be read together by a group of as many differently educated people as possible. What better occasion to let these two aims join forces.
Concert: As we there are where are we
A musical renarration of Finnegans Wake by Mariana Lanari and Sjoerd Leijten
Brékkek Kékkek Kékkek Kékkek! Kóax Kóax Kóax! Ualu Ualu Ualu! Quaouauh! The long night of Finnegans Wake is back again in a musical chocolate box. We will perform passages from chapter 2.2, making music, reading out loud, listening softly, using instruments, objects, electroacoustic sounds and words to create a faithfully unfaithful re-narration of the story.
Mariana Lanari is a performance artist. She received a MFA from the Sandberg Instituut and is currently doing a PHD at the University of Amsterdam. Her research is about the interaction between politics of reading and reading infrastructures, focused on the topic of mediation between the physical and the digital library. Considering the library as heritage, cultural memory and perhaps the library as a museum.
Sjoerd Leijten (1983) is a composer, sound artist and radio maker with a focus on dissident sounds, improvisation and politics. Within his compositions, improvisations and installations he uses home-baked software, electromagnetic waves, field recordings and self-devised instruments. He creates music and sound for cinema, radioplays and video games. He hosts the radioshow trashkot – ‘a rancid tissue of trash, politics and noise’ – on underground radio station Radio Centraal in Antwerp and makes the podcast trashlinie in collaboration with researcher and writer Roel Griffioen.
Programme
13.30 tour of the exhibition by its curator Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes.
14.30 open invitation to join in a reading of a short section of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake
15.30 The reading morphs into a concert on the text by Mariana Lanari and Sjoerd Leijten
The event will take place at the Van Abbemuseum library and the entrance is free. You don't need to register in advance.
