by Onajídé Shabaka - 15 Feb., 2007

   Clamor - The Moore Space

    by Onajídé Shabaka

"For their exhibition at The Moore Space, the artists Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla have taken up the genre of war music as the basis for a new body of work. Tracing the history of this form of sonic expression back to earliest of military encounters, the exhibition investigates the bodily and physical dimensions of the music of war.

A large sculptural form serving as a hybrid chamber resembling perhaps a bunker, a meteorite, a ruin, a cave and/or a sound booth, will accommodate a group of musicians playing various repertoires of war songs from different geographical territories and historical periods. The simultaneous performances, at times harmonizing and at other moments in complete discord, will cumulatively generate a monstrous montage of war music, somewhere between a symphony and cacophony."

During Art Basel Miami Beach, The Moore Space had two live performances of the music, one of which was heard by your author, that was clearly a cacophony of sounds, some intelligible, some not. The sculpture's commanding presence provided a cave-like bunker out of which the musicians pointed their horns.

Silvia Cubiñá, The Moore Space director she spoke about the artists' body of work, is nicely documented with images at The Walker (Minneapolis) online. What was most interesting was how they have managed to survive and flourish without longtime sponsorship. That kind of thing takes a lot of fortitude.

"Break the word 'question' down to its root--quest--and you get a sense of the insurgent inquiry practiced by artists Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla. Their poetic and unabashedly activist conceptual art challenges everything from common definitions--they define protest as 'proactive testing' and responsibility as 'the ability to respond'--to concepts like free speech and historical commemoration. Confronting the assumptions behind everyday terms arises from a state of permanent questioning, says Calzadilla. 'We believe that art has much to offer to this task, in its potential to provoke the public into a space of individual questioning about preconceived notions of truth, about forms of representation, participation, and identification.'

In nearly all of Allora & Calzadilla’s work, the art object is merely a catalyst, awaiting activation by those who happen upon it." [via: eyeteeth]

The Moore Space is a non-profit arts organization dedicated to multi-disciplinary contemporary art practices. It offers a year-round program including exhibitions, educational programs, internships, artist residencies, lectures, and performances. This project is generously sponsored by Craig Robins, Rosa de la Cruz, Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, the Cultural Affairs Council, The Miami-Dade Mayor and the Board of County Commissioners. Additional funding is provided by Bank of America and the National Endowment for the Arts.

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