Take Over – a video and sound installation comprising two films – addresses central themes in Anri Sala’s oeuvre, exploring the relationships between music and narrative, architecture and film and interleaving qualities of different media in both complex and intuitive ways to produce works in which one medium takes on the qualities of another.

A conceptual point of departure are two well-known musical works, affiliated by an entangled political and cultural history, the Marseillaise and the Internationale. Written in 1792, the Marseillaise was closely tied to the French Revolution but also quickly spread to other countries where it became a symbol for the overthrow of oppressive regimes. Thus the 1871 lyrics of the Internationale were initially also set to the tune of the Marseillaise, until 1888 when its original music was composed and the song became the standard anthem of the socialist movement. Both anthems have undergone major changes in their political connotations: from revolution, restoration, socialism, resistance and patriotism, to additional associations with colonization and oppression in the second half of the twentieth century (as national anthems of France and the Soviet Union, respectively). Yet to this day their meaning remains in flux, as the two songs continue to be appropriated. Take Over makes audible the close relationship of these two political anthems and mines the musical kinship for traces of this changing symbolic significance. Sound literally determines the films, whose changing focus is tied to musical tones and the movement of the keys producing them – even if the underlying system remains elusive.

Both films have been originally conceived to run simultaneously with their respective soundtracks playing in tandem. For this presentation, the films will be screened one after the other.

Take Over features pianist Clemens Hund-Göschel.

Mixed Behaviour Reloaded, 2018
Performance
Duration approx. 30 min

Mixed Behaviour Reloaded (2018), a performance that will be presented for the first time, is a sequel to the artist’s work Mixed Behaviour (2003). This piece embodies the most important themes and strategies of this srtist’s oeuvre, including a play between foreground and background, light and dark, sound and picture. At the original Mixed Behaviour (2003), a lone disc jockey, DJ Minimim, filmed squarely from behind spins records on a Tirana rooftop. It is a rainy New Year’s Eve, and the man bends to his task covered by a plastic tarp while fireworks explode all around him, briefly illuminating the darkness; their clamor overlaps with the sound of gunfire, a local holiday tradition. Gradually, we realize that the video’s soundtrack plays in manipulated synchrony with the fireworks, the DJ appears to control a scene that stretches across the background like a movie screen or canvas. However, while the music proceeds in a predictable, linear fashion, seeming to conjure the fireworks in the distance, we realize that the images are periodically moving backward; almost undetectably, the fireworks are reversing, seeming to implode. This action suggests the practice of “scratching” – rapidly and repeatedly reversing the direction of a record on a turntable. As Mixed Behaviour shows us, Sala exploits the medium of digital video so comfortably and completely that his arrangement of digital image and accompanying sound offers an astonishingly new use of filmic art. For Mixed Behaviour Reloaded, Sala works again with DJ Minimim, inviting him to play in tandem with instances of himself from 15 years ago. The performance will bring back the echo of Tirana sounds of 2003 represented in Mixed Behaviour, now in a completely new sound constellation, as it will resonate the night of May 30th 2018, at REJA, nearby the central Boulevard of Tirana, now manipulating sound synchrony with the city’s vibrant noises.

Anri Sala

Born in Tirana, Albania, 1974. Postgraduate Studies in film directing, Le Fresnoy, Studio National des Arts Contemporains, Tourcoing, France, 1998 – 2000 Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (video), Paris, France 1996 – 1998 National Academy of Arts (BA Painting), Tirana, Albania, 1992 – 1996 Lives and works in Berlin, Germany.Reja – adress: Bulevardi Dëshmorët e Kombit 4, Tiranë, Albania