SEXPLAYMONK & SEX - NO SAD BEAT; TWISTED; VINÌCIUS; PLEASE LOVE ME, I'M STEREO
a wall work & four piano reductions
by SEX (Anneli Käsmayr, Branka Čolić & Michael Rieken)
@ INTERLUDIUM - GAK Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst Bremen, 2016
SEX are producing two works for the group exhibition Interludium I at the GAK Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst. The wall work 'sexplaysmonk' announces an event that will take place in the gallery towards the end of the exhibition period. On the one hand, the billboard becomes an actual announcement of a musical event, on the other hand, it refers to the many billboards that appear legally and illegally in urban contexts worldwide and function as announcements and signs in the cityscape. 33 posters pasted on the wall announce an event entitled "SEX PLAYS MONK" which will take place on March 31, 2016 in the GAK: SEX plays records from the Limited Edition Jonathan Monk The Surprise (Remix by sex). For this purpose, SEX, in cooperation with the British conceptual artist Jonathan Monk and based on his work The Surprise (2006), put together 100 maxi singles with music from pop, dance, soul and house and anonymized their captions. This results in a random selection of records, which SEX will play on March 31st in the GAK.
The second work is an edition of piano reductions from pieces by the band SEX. For a live performance to celebrate the centenary of the main building of the HFBK Hamburg, the band wrote 11 new pieces in the house music idiom. Although writing is not the right term for most producers of electronic dance music. The pieces of music are mostly put together on the computer from different music snippets and rhythmic sound patterns. Using timbre filters, melodic or rhythmic motifs are emphasized or covered. Compositional decisions are made by listening directly to the track through the speakers. For the exhibition "Interludium I" in the GAK Society for Contemporary Art Bremen, SEX have short-circuited the digital recording technology for electronic dance music with the recording technology of classical music. All the tools for this are available in today's digital audio sequencer programs. Like all automatic translation systems,
the programs that turn sound into notation also create their own idiotic beauty. In the piano excerpts of the house music tracks by SEX, the music is de-sounded in this way to the level of interpretable signs.