Interceptions Joël Barr alias Joseph Berg alias Metr / Messiaen, 2008
Sculpture, walnut and oak veneer on wood, engraved tinned electronic plates
325 cm long

The wood sculpture running along the wall suggests both a sophisticated example of the stringed instrument maker ’s art and a synthesiser from times gone by. In it the viewer can see (or read), etched into tinned copper, a sonogram – a visual depiction of the frequency and duration of a sound. Here, by the transposition of seconds into centimetres, the sonogram has been stretched to make the length of the sculpture match that of a piece of music. The musical work in question is one of Olivier Messiaen’s four Etudes de Rythmes, composed in 1949 and a decisive factor in the emergence of total serial music. Here musical modernity finds itself visually translated via folk sculpture. Among Messiaen’s pupils in 1949 was Joel Barr, an American electronics expert and spy on the run, who dreamed of becoming a composer. In 1950, with his name changed to Joseph Berg and his biography rewritten, Barr was exfiltrated – against his will – to Moscow, where he contributed to the creation of Zelenograd, the Soviet Silicon Valley. The drawing of the sonogram, etched into potentially conductive electronic plates, thus suggests the hypothesis of a hidden influence between the beginnings of total serial music and microelectronics. Via a process of concentric association the artist triggers parallel narratives within cultural history and reinforces little-known connections that seek to destabilise the hierarchies established by collective memory.

Text by Pedro Morais in Bettina Samson, Laps & Strates, edition Adera, Lyon, 2009.

 

 

 

 

© NETTIE HORN