Evgenija Wassilew
October 15-30, 2010
Schalter is pleased to announce Dissonate, an exhibition by French-German artist Evgenija Wassilew. Wassilew’s recent projects have touched on the borders and possibilities of communication. Her work has focused on the song-compositions of small animals – voices, like foreign languages, between music and noise. The situations her works create are reminiscent of the methods of behavioral studies, often combining them with a romantic approach: making possible the improbable.
Wassilew’s installation at Schalter, Sonata for 63 Solo-Violins, transforms the body of a loudspeaker into a tropical living space for Mediterranean crickets. The speakers play back the third movement of Béla Bartók’s Solo Violin Sonata, stirring the crickets to chirp: Fuga – Risoluto, non troppo vivo. A microphone inside the speaker sends the sounds to a harmonizer, which tries to adjust the pitch of the chirps to the notes of the violin. The harmonizer succeeds or fails to various degrees, according to the temperament of the insects and the violin’s tempo. Simultaneous to this process, the tweeters of the loudspeaker play back the amplified chirps.
The second work, Melos Amoris, documents the attempt to translate a humpback whale song for domestic mice. The whale song was transposed to the ultrasonic frequency and sound volume of mice and played for a defined period in their cage. An ultrasonic microphone recorded the noises in the cage, as well as the courtship songs the mice produced while being exposed to the sounds of the whale. Ten songs were selected for an Audio CD, and returned to the range of human hearing. The accompanying booklet presents a selection of documents related to the subject. Headphones are available to listen to the CD; the printed graphics can be “read along” with the songs.
Evgenija Wassilew graduated from Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris (ensb-a) and received a DAAD postgraduate Scholarship for University of Arts (UdK) Berlin in 2008. Her works have been featured in exhibitions and festivals in Europe; Dissonate is her first solo exhibition in Berlin.
The artist would like to express her ongoing gratitude to Raimund Specht, Avisoft Bioacoustics, for his support and generosity.
