Ann Hamilton voce

Ann Hamilton voce Events

Concert＆Film Screenings

 Exhibition Information

corpus, 2004, MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts, Photo: Thibault Jeanson

Ann Hamilton’svoce is her first exhibition at a public museum in Japan. Born in 1956 in the Midwest, Hamilton studied Textile Design at the University of Kansas and Sculpture at Yale University. In 1999 She was honored as the American representative at the Venice Biennale, where she addressed the classical architecture of the Venice pavilion as both the subject and the object of the work, myein, to evoke a legacy of material and racial inequality in the history of American Culture. In the installation toxic colored fuschia powder fell along the perimeter of walls embossed with Braille and coded spoken texts haunted the empty volumes of the pavilions 4 symmetrical gallery spaces. Hamilton has made several site visits to the Kumamoto area to research for this show and will exhibit a new installation which spans two adjacent galleries.The upper half of the larger gallery will be animated by the movement of spinning audio speakers and the recorded sound of cicada calls. Also circling overhead will be two new video works whose path of light will bisects the mechanisms whichthrow sound to create an immersive hypnotic surround. In the second gallery, a collection of approximately 100 rectangular wooden tables from Kumamoto will bisect the volume of the space with a second horizon. The plastic encased tables will have surfaces set with a collection of old analog radios, desk lights and small bundles of donated Kimonos.

The atmosphere created by the sound of the analog radio tubes will create a constant acoustic background. This hum will be punctuated by sound from the adjacent room and the live call of people mimicing recorded bird songs. As an extension of Hamilton’s interest in the relation between animals and humans and in her desire to vocalize and materialize that divide visitors in this project are invited to borrow headsets, follow the altered bird recordings and join a regular schedule of volunteers standing on the fully wrapped table to vocalizing the recorded songs. While Bird song, impossible to fully explain, notate or script by human means, dooms us to imperfect mimicry, makes present a longing perhaps no language can cross.

* This exhibition will be held only at Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto, Japan.
*The exhibition catalog will be published at the beginning of April.

Ann Hamilton voce Events

Concert Film Screenings