IKLECTIK presents,
Rie Nakajima and Pierre Berthet duo + Pierre Berthet will play “Galileo”, a piece for 5 sounding pendulums by Tom Johnson (this piece will be played at IKLECTIK’s garden)
Saturday 14 September – doors 8pm – start 8.30pm | £7 adv / £9 otd | BUY TICKETS
Rie Nakajima and Pierre Berthet have been creating various ways to vibrate things so that their acoustic shadows dance around: invisible air volumes that reshape constantly, move in the space, enter in the most secret places and inside ourselves. A way to get closer to their inherent spirits is to listen to them, eventually encouraging them to produce sounds and resonate by various means: hitting, caressing, shaking, beating, scraping, scratching, clawing, boiling, clapping, rattling, rocking, throwing, moving, magnetising, clamping, cooking, pinching, galvanising, motorising, bowing, blowing, plucking, heating up, flowing, freezing, dropping, dripping, connecting, rolling, mixing, extending, singing…
« The day Galileo Galilei discovered the law of the pendulum, I’m sure he thought he was reading the book of nature, and when I play my pendulums I sometimes have a similar feeling. I can not control their movement and can only try to follow their rhythm, their natural rhythm. The law of the pendulum is only one among thousands of laws that control the world we live in, not counting those yet undiscovered, but it is a natural law that can be seen and heard rather easily, and often people who attend performances of Galileo also feel that they are not only hearing music, but also reading a bit from the book of nature» said Tom Johnson (www.editions75.com).
Galileo is a composition/instrument that swings on five pendulums. The slowest of these hangs from a line about 260 cm long, suspended from a height of about four meters. The other four pendulums must be carefully measured, following the formula discovered by Galileo Galilei some 500 years ago, so as to make their cycles in 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, 4/5 and the time necessary for the longest. A sequence of short compositions allow us to hear all the different combinations of tempos. The piece has evolved slowly from three pendulums to five, from 10 minute to over 40, in a variety of situations.
Rie Nakajima
Rie Nakajima is a Japanese artist working with installations and performances that produce sound. Her works are most often composed in direct response to unique architectural spaces using a combination of kinetic devices and found objects. She has exhibited and performed widely both in the UK and overseas and has produced ‘Sculpture’ with David Toop since 2013. With Keiko Yamamoto she has the music project ‘O YAMA O’, which explores music with no genre. She also has a collaborative project ‘Dead Plants/Living Objects’ with Pierre Berthet. She has recently had her first major solo exhibition at IKON Gallery in Birmingham.
www.rienakajima.com
Pierre Berthet
Ph Credit: fabonthemoon
Pierre Berthet was born in 1958, lives and works in Liège, Belgium. Musician, composer, sound artist, he studied percussion with Georges-Elie Octors, improvisation with Garrett List, composition with Frederic Rzewski, music theory with Henri Pousseur. He composes and builds sculptural sound objects and installations using steel, plastic, water, vacuum cleaners. He usually presents them in exhibitions and solo or duo performances in art galleries, outdoor contexts and music venues. He has worked with Frédéric Le Junter, has played percussion with Arnold Dreyblatt and has a duet project with Rie Nakajima.
www.pierreberthet.be
