Things We Won in the Fire

Things We Won in the Fire

‘’ In 1960, La Monte Young, a twenty- five year old north- american composer, and a student of John Cage and Karl- Heinz Stockhausen, wrote a set of pieces to be performed. The work is called Compositions 1960 and became an important reference in sound art. It consists of twelve instructions to be followed by the performers. The instructions span a variety of actions related to space, perception and imagination. Drawing a straight line and following it makes as much part of the work as to release butterflies into the room. In instruction #2 Young describes how to build a fire in front of the audition, the fire itself becoming a composition. He even addresses the composer(s) as ‘the builder(s)’, who should not sit in between the audience and the fire so that the piece can be experienced thoroughly.

In sound art the perception as well as the expression of space play prominent roles. Here the space has to be understood in a broader way than the architectural constructions. Same goes for the term of sound since in 1916 Edgard Varese had emancipated the idea of musical composition to all kinds of sounds we perceive, from nature to street, from noise to silence. Around the same time the relations from sound to space have been also discussed by the painter Luigi Russolo in his Futurist manifesto ‘The Art of Noise’ . A little later the idea of mere sound becoming part of art production has been meandering also in Dadaism and Surrealism. But it was not until the mid of twentieth century that this form of art would gain more prominence and space as part of the interdisciplinary Fluxus movement. Unique in its scale, location and collection Klankenbos in the Belgian town of Neerpelt is a project dedicated to sound art. Here a beautiful forest with tall trees invites both composers and listeners to involve with all aspects which nature offers. The installations vary from mechanic sculptures set in motion by human proximity to spaces where one can experience silence or the sounds of nature. Visitors discover different aspects of sound art, which is not limited to musical compositions in the classical sense.’’