Contemporary fairy tales, Tale No.6 ©Elena Habicher 2013
Anymore Anyway, 300 x 160 cm, mixed media (wall painting, textile objects, oil painting, ceramic), variable dimensions. Installation view, Fresh12 at Kogart Museum, Budapest, 2012
Maybe not now but eventually 500 x 500 cm, mixed media (sound, vinyl, metal pole, paint). Installation view. Site-specific installation commisioned by Syros Cultural Center, Ermoupolis Townhall, Syros, Greece, July 2013
Maybe not now but eventually, mixed media (sound, vinyl, metal pole, paint). Installation view, Ermoupolis Townhall, Syros, Greece, July 2013 → More…
Contemporary Fairy Tales sound piece - project at 11 art spaces and galleries, Zurich, 2013 → More…
Contemporary Fairy Tales sound piece 31 May - 14 June 2013 Zurich, CH
„Contemporary Fairy Tales“ is a sound installation in eleven parts inhabiting different interspaces in the city of Zurich at Barbarian Gallery, ZHdK VBK, Design Museum Zurich, Erarta Galleries Zurich, Rotwand Gallery, Message Salon/Perla Mode, Die Diele, Barbara Seiler Gallery, Herrmann Germann Contemporary, Florian Christopher Show Room and Counter Space (Map of tales and locations)
Exhibition dates 31 May - 14 June 2013
Opening 31 May 6pm - Diplomausstellung BA VBK ZHdK 2013 - Sihlquai 125 8005 ZH
*Second opening and artist talk curated by Elisa Tosoni - 7 June 6pm - Counter Space - Kirchenweg 4 8032 ZH
Invited guests Meesha Chang, Director Erarta Galleries Zurich and Livio Baumgartner, artist and curator Die Diele off space.
The project „Contemporary Fairy Tales“ is a sound piece consisting of 11 loops, each containing a story narrated by the voice of a man, woman or child. The loops are randomly spread around Zürich at 11 different art spaces and galleries and installed in interspaces such as mailboxes, windows, doors and everyday objects, some inside, some other outdoors. Each sound piece runs endlessly for 14 days.
As an extension to the sound piece, the artist book „Contemporary Fairy Tales“ is spread all around Zürich at random art and non-art places during the same period. The publication is both a kind of children book and a visual guide documenting and disseminating the project. The book contains all 11 tales and includes photographs and addresses of the places where the voices can be heard. However, the texts of the stories themselves are reduced, or abstracted to black signs on blank pages.
The project is aimed at everyday life in the city landscape within a certain timeframe, and allows for the free interpretations and private experiences of anyone who might encounter it. As the sound is intentionally installed within the frame of art spaces, it aims to objectify the public sound into sound sculpture, and therefore to encourage a certain way of perception and reading.
The sound piece is based on a series of short fictional stories written in 2010. They are supposedly about a woman, who has been abused, mistreated or misunderstood during her life, by herself or by others. The texts are a work-in-progress and also include diaries, letters and written sketches. So far, they have been a source material or strategic tool at the basis of Habicher’s paintings, objects and sculptures. Now employing the form and function of sound, the stories become a kind of radio storytelling for anybody who by chance happens to encounter them.
Eleven voices for eleven narrations, or how Habicher defines them, “Contemporary Fairy Tales”. Odd and often suspended along the fine line between the grotesque and the horrific and violent that hits straight in the gut, they read out metaphorical snapshots of absurd contemporary living. They recount of the monstrosity of bodies that are somehow fluid, whose physicality is extreme, and painfully magical.
Like ancestral fairytales, these short narrations play at a deep psychological level, tapping into our primal selves. The storytelling technique is simple, and the tone is intentionally impersonal, whether the voice is that of a child, a woman, or a man. Such directness makes the experience vitreous and eerie. The viewer is left to wonder, are these voices actual testimonies, perhaps reconstructions of some crimes or simply, intense fiction?
Contemporary Fairy Tales links eleven of Zurich’s exhibition spaces into a new looping soundscape, yet each voice is - and remains - independent from each other, and can be appreciated as a chance encounter at the margin of a different white cube. Voices that are allowed interventions within the context of a gallery yet are tinged of parasitic hues. That occupy space with an impalpable presence, yet remain extremely volatile. That might not be heard or noticed, tucked in a corner at the back of a gallery, mysteriously leaking from a letterbox, or caught in-between the inside and the outside.
Each sound-loop, playing non-stop over fourteen days (from May 31st, until June 13th, 2013) comes thus to embody, as a single piece within a complex orchestra, the physicality of a humorously dark invisibility, where the tragedy of a random, chance encounter and the incidental of time are played over and over again, triggering uncontrolled meaning associations, interpretations and feelings within the bodies and minds of those viewers who were perceptive enough to (re)collect them.
(Text by Elisa Tosoni)
Tale No.1 (Demo version)
Contemporary Fairy Tails
Sound piece for the final work for BA Diploma Fine Arts, ZHdK curated by Bea Schlingelhoff und Martin Jaeggi.
- Mentors - Dr. Laura Arici, Andres Bosshard, Christian Fuerholz.
- Time - 31 May - 13 June 2013, 14 days - the whole period of Diplomausstellung.
- Location - Interspaces (Zwischenräume) of different art/public spaces in Zurich
- Place - installed in every day objects such as doors, windows, tables, etc.
- Publication - Art publication about the project with description, photos and listing of locations and people involved.
Short project description
- Audio loops, voices of different people, women, men and kids reading stories. These are 11 stories. All the stories are written by the artist, Elena Habicher.
- Each story is around 0.4 min long. There are 11 loops that are spread in 11 different art spaces of Zurich. Each person, one after another reads the same story again and again.
- Each sound piece will be put independently on small audio devices and installed in on doors, windows, tables, etc.
11 art spaces where loops will be installed
- Design Museum, Kunsthaus, Barbarian, Erarta, Message Salon, Rotwand, Barbara Seiler, Florian Christopher, Die Diele, Counter Space.
Contact
elh(at)elena-habicher.com
Untitled, mixed media (2 textile objects, stool, hair, mirror), variable dimensions. Installation view, Re_ at Gallery 201, 2012 Zurich
The knife in my back, mixed media (wall painting, textile, metal chain, hair, shoes), variable dimensions. Installation view, ZHdK, Zurich, 2010