Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
University of the West of England, Bristol
Music city - do it, dare it, chance it
Music City was a new site-specific video live art installation contained within a substantial retrospective solo exhibition across six rooms at the Cheekwood Museum of Art in Nashville (April - September 2008) of Buchheim’s Song Archive Project. Containing material from America, Germany, Iran, Ireland and the UK, the exhibition included ‘My Thoughts Are Free’, a video showing Buchheim in various locations in Tehran, head covered, singing the old German Lied and song of resistance ‘Die Gedanken Sind Frei’, providing both context and platform for the live installation (http://vimeo.com/16850691).
The installation invited members of the public to sing live on stage by means of a screen which displayed word prompts. The performances were captured on video via a live link into another exhibition room where they could be viewed by spectators. The installation extended and developed the research of the Song Archive Project by examining the relationship between spectator and participator, public and private realms, voyeurism and exhibitionism. Through strategies designed to maximise and trigger audience participation and response, the installation moved on from Brechtian and Debordian notions of the need to shock the passive spectator to break down the barriers or distinctions between the performer and audience, through the more nuanced methodology advanced by Jacques Rancière that exploits the differentiation between instruction and genuine interaction.
The exhibition was reviewed by David Maddox, ‘Question Authority’, Nashville Scene (7 August 2008) and discussed in Liam Devlin’s essay, ‘{E}QUALITY’ in SAP (2011).
The methodology developed for ‘Music City’ has been employed subsequently by Buchheim at other live events: Plan 9, Bristol (2009) and Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff (2011). The exhibition resulted in invitations for Buchheim’s work to be exhibited at the Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, New York (2008), Green on Red Gallery, Dublin (2008) and EFA Project Space, New York (2010).
