Let's continue the dance thread that started with yesterday's interview with this brief post on the Kraftwerk's exhibition at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm.
Entitled "Dance Machines - From Léger to Kraftwerk" and curated by Jo Widoff, the exhibition - opening on 22 January - will launch the 2014 art season at the museum. The event will be accompanied by two Kraftwerk concerts at Cirkus (21-22 Jan) in Stockholm.
German music and artist collective Kraftwerk was founded at the every end of the '60s by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider-Esleben out of the failing music project Organisation.
After setting up the Kling Klang Studio in Düsseldorf, Kraftwerk started experimenting with new sounds and compositions, using homemade synthesizers, drum machines, and associated processing devices such as the vocoder to create soundscapes characterised by innovative textures.
Works such as "Autobahn" (1974), "Radio-Activity" (1975), "Trans-Europe Express" (1977), "The Man Machine" (1978) and "Computer World" (1981), entered history establishing the foundation for electronic dance music.
In recent years Kraftwerk have returned to the art scene, most recently with a series of acclaimed 3-D concerts at MoMA in New York (2012), Tate Modern in London (2013), and Kunstsammlung NRW in Düsseldorf (2013).
Though the Moderna Museet exhibition will focus around Kraftwerk's 3-D installation "1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8" (2013; the title refers to Kraftwerk’s eight albums), it will also feature works looking at the fascination with mechanisation and the impact of the industry and machines on aesthetic ideals.
The essence of the exhibiton can be summarised with Ralf Hütter's words about the relationship between man and machine: "It feels good to be part of the machine. It is a liberating feeling. For one thing because I, as an individual, take a back seat. We play the machines, and the machines play us."
The exhibition will present around 50 works from Moderna Museet’s renowned collection, along with works on loan from other institutions, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Dansmuseet in Stockholm.
Visitors will be able to rediscover works by the Italian Futurists such as Giacomo Balla, early Russian avant-garde artists like Alexandra Ekster, and figures such as Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia and Gösta Adrian-Nilsson who portrayed bodies reduced to mechanical objects. Modernism will be tackled through works by Fernand Léger and Sonia Delaunay-Terk, and the poets Blaise Cendrars and Guillaume Apollinaire, and there will also be sections on film, choreography and dance, considered as arts that portrayed movement, energy and dynamism throughout the decades.
"For more than four decades now, Kraftwerk have explored the relationship between man and machine," curator Jo Widoff stated in a press release. "In the museum galleries, Kraftwerk’s 3-D installation will initiate an electronic and conceptual dialogue with early modernism, something I am certainly looking forward to.”
"Dance Machines - From Léger to Kraftwerk" from 22 January to 27 April 2014, at Moderna Museet in Stockholm.
Image credits
Kraftwerk
3-D video installation – 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8. Installation view Sprüth Magers Berlin, 2013
© Photo: Timo Ohler. Copyright Kraftwerk, 2013. Courtesy Sprüth Magers Berlin London
Kraftwerk
3-D video installation – 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8, Techno Pop, 2013
© Copyright Kraftwerk, 2013. Courtesy Sprüth Magers Berlin London
Kraftwerk
3-D video installation – 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8. Installation view Sprüth Magers Berlin, 2013
© Photo: Timo Ohler. Copyright Kraftwerk, 2013. Courtesy Sprüth Magers Berlin London
Kraftwerk
3-D video installation – 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8, Autobahn, 2013
© Copyright Kraftwerk, 2013. Courtesy Sprüth Magers Berlin London
Kraftwerk
3-D video installation – 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8. Installation view Sprüth Magers Berlin,, 2013
© Photo: Timo Ohler. Copyright Kraftwerk, 2013. Courtesy Sprüth Magers Berlin London
Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos
Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos
Comments