#20 Jan Mladovsky, Melody Spirit
2 - 21 June
In the Church of St.Simon and St.Jude
Performance with Jost Hecker
Tuesday 20 June 7.30pm
Jan Mladovsky’s inaugural project for OUTPOST’s temporary second space – located at the church of St. Simon & St. Jude, adjacent to OUTPOST - is a double screen sound & moving image installation entitled Melody spirit. The work emerges from considering certain cultural & political parallels between Britain & Japan. Both countries are historically distinct sovereign Island nations, nostalgically retaining token royal families, but post WW2, - with the abrupt demise of their own imperial powers - they each sought close economic and cultural alignment with the ‘new world’ dominance of the USA.
Melody spirit will be simultaneously presented in Norwich and at the Vision gallery, Tokyo, and later this year in Trutnov Gallery, Czech Republic.
On entering the large single room we are confronted with two free standing opposing screens, each of monumental proportions. One screen carries the panning abstract details of a hugely magnified American one-dollar bill. The scanning is systematic – even tempo, left to right, top to bottom – revealing in high resolution the ever changing filigree patterns of the dollar’s ‘security driven’ printed ornamentation. A single pass taking twenty seconds and the full scan lasting eighteen minutes.
On the second screen, a seated male cellist performs alternating and improvised versions of the British & Japanese national anthems; the fluctuations in his delivery discernibly modified in response to the opposing screen image, apparently transcribing its ‘visual score’. At a mid point in the performance - without altering his professional demeanour - the cellist is unexpectedly naked; newly vulnerable his authority hangs in the air and we are obliged to reassess the scene. The performance is accompanied on screen by the text - in Japanese and English - of both national hymns, allowing for those in the audience sufficiently moved to enter the piece and participate with their voice.
Mladovsky’s has shown extensively during the last 30 years and in 2001 he published Magnet His practice is explicitly concerned with communication; the exploration of how – wittingly or unwittingly - signs, images and words convey meaningful messages, in the act of revelation or concealment.
Melody spirit can be read as both a sincere meditation on the formal graphic elegance of the dollar bill and a respectful attempt to reconstitute two tired musical passages; but in it’s seemingly straightforward juxtaposition of these elements, it seeks to approach the vast socio-political complexities of the historical development of the ‘democratic’ West.
The cellist Jost Hecker and Jan Mladovsky, supported by a student choir will stage a live performance of the piece in the gallery at the end of the show.