Prouvost blurs the line between reality and fiction
1. Laure Prouvost: GDM – Grand Dad’s Visitor Center, Italy
This solo show at Pirelli HangarBicocca presents some of Turner Prize-winner Laure Prouvost’s main works. The French artist overturns conventional forms of narration to blur the boundaries between reality and fiction: her works, which straddle art and cinema, create bizarre and mysterious situations in which reality becomes increasingly uncertain. Her films come across as an audio-visual cacophony of images that are seductive yet also troubling, playful and irreverent.
Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, October 19–April 9
The collapse of reason in front of the erotic
2. Video Sound Art Festival, Italy
The theme of this year’s festival, which takes place in five locations across Milan, is ‘the collapse of reason in front of the erotic’. Seven international artists – Nour Awada, Bibi Yamamoto, Alice Jarry, Thadeusz Tischbein, Delphine Depres, Cleo Fariselli and Ugo La Pietra – mix video, sculpture, installation and performance in their investigations of this topic. For the first time, the programme includes a series of complementary lectures led by art theorists and professors of philosophy.
Venues around Milan, October 20–November 6
videosoundart.com/festival2016
Hito Steyerl’s ‘Factory of the Sun’, 2015. Photo: Manuel Reinartz
3. Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905–2016, USA
This exhibition, which spans more than a century of works by American artists, focuses on the ways in which artists have dismantled and reassembled the conventions of cinema – screen, projection, darkness – to create new experiences of the moving image. The works on view – which take the form of installations, 3D environments, sculpture, performance and painting – confound expectations.
The Whitney, New York, October 28-February 5
whitney.org/Exhibitions/Dreamlands
This show draws on principles of combat. Photo: Dimitry Paranyushkin
4. Meditation on Non Destruction, Germany
This live performance – which combines physical theatre and sound – is based on the principles of combat disciplines and techniques for survival that have been tested during real combat and war situations.
Ufer Studios, Berlin, October 29–November 1
5. Wet Sounds, Norway
Listeners float, swim and dive in the water
Wet Sounds is an underwater sound-art installation and performance created by artist Joel Cahen. Visitors float, swim and dive in the water as they enjoy this new aural experience (read our review of a previous event). At the Well Spa in Oslo, the underwater concert will be accompanied by visuals by artist, composer and performer La Horrox.
The Well Spa, Oslo, November 4
Cheryl Leonard
6. Cheryl Leonard, USA
The composer, performer, improviser and instrument builder Cheryl Leonard investigates sounds and objects from the natural world, using stones, wood, water, ice, sand, shells, feathers and bones as musical instruments. At the University of Alabama, Cheryl performs a set of works that combine these natural-object instruments with field recordings to explore and evoke the polar regions.
University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, November 4
Museum of Contemporary Art, Roskilde
7. Open Music Work Place, Denmark
For several days, a composer and two musicians work together in the main exhibition venue of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde. This month, the museum hosts composer Hanne Tofte Jespersen, Karen Humle and double bassist Ida Bach Jensen. Visitors can experience works in progress and converse with the artists.
Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskilde, November 5-13
It might be a zoo, asylum or cabaret
8. Circa: Beyond, France
Beyond – from contemporary Australian circus company Circa – sets dynamic acts like trapeze and Chinese pole to a soundtrack of show tunes, ballads and electronica. The spectacle is set on multiple stages within stages: small, red-curtained worlds. We might be on a stage, but we might equally be in a cabaret, zoo or asylum.
Salle Renaud-Barrault, Théâtre du Rond-Point, Paris, November 8-27
theatredurondpoint.fr/spectacle/beyond/
The Calder Quartet is known for championing contemporary classical music
9. Morton Feldman: Calder Quartet, USA
Morton Feldman’s milestone String Quartet No. 2 has been described as athletic, a feat of strength, even insane. The composer himself called it a nightmare. The Calder Quartet is taking it on – all five hours of it – at The Met Cloisters. Feldman, a pillar of mid-century New York experimentalism, would be celebrating his 90th birthday if he were alive today. The occasion is marked with this concert.
The Fuentidueña Chapel at The Met Cloisters, New York, November 12
metmuseum.org/events/programs/met-live-arts/calder-quartet-series
Music and physical theatre combine
10. CONSTELLATIONS I. Before I Say Yes, Czech Republic
Music and physical theatre combine in this world premiere from the BERG Orchestra and Spitfire. One of the most progressive ensembles in the Czech Republic, Spitfire produces works of physical, visual and dance theatre. CONSTELLATIONS I. Before I Say Yes asks audiences to experience the performer’s state of being.
Ponec Theatre, Prague, November 29-30