Four and one ways to display an old Peruvian recording
2011
Sound installation
(piezoelectric discs, audio player, waxed wood and metal stand. Audio loop: 1'33. Dimensions: 290 x 90 x 120 cm)
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photos: Vibrating Revivals, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin
The installation displays four assemblages of piezoelectric discs that function as sound diffusers by entering into vibration, to play one of the very first musical recordings realized in Peru, originally on a wax cylinder. The Mochica music that can be heard through the structures was captured in 1910 by the German-Peruvian ethnologist Hans Heinrich Brüning, who was also an avid collector of Pre-Columbian artefacts and founder of a museum. The golden assemblages echo the Gold Room this museum housed and the treasure rooms common in other ethnographic museums. Gold was an important motivation for the earliest European expeditions and conquests in South-America, where conquistadores and treasure hunters chased the myth of El Dorado, a lost city of gold.
Thanks to the Berlin Phonogram Archive for providing the recording Serranita, by Hans Heinrich Brüning (1910, Peru). Made possible thanks to the Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture, the Conseil Général de la Moselle, France, the Berlin Phonogramm Archive and Rachel Carey.
Quatre assemblages de disques piézo-électriques fonctionnent comme des diffuseurs sonores en entrent en vibration. L'un des tout premiers enregistrements réalisé au Pérou (Serranita, Hans Heinrich Brüning, 1910) peut être entendu au travers de la structure.
Merci à l’Archive de Phonogrammes de Berlin pour l’enregistrement Serranita par Hans Heinrich Brüning réalisé au Pérou en 1910. Réalisé avec le soutien du Fonds voor beeldende kunsten, vormgeving en bouwkunst, Amsterdam, Pays-Bas, du Conseil Général de la Moselle, France, de l’Archive de Phonogrammes de Berlin et de Rachel Carey.