Opening on Thursday, 12th of December, 7 p.m.
Brassai Sámuel Street, no. 5, Cluj-Napoca
Société Réaliste, in cooperation with computer engineer Frédéric Mauclère, has developed a software calculating average musical notations from MIDI files. The artists used this new software to calculate the average national anthem of the 193 member states of the United Nations. It is known that although the UN is an organization born from the union of nations according to its name, does not have an anthem, a song which is going beyond the nation states self-image and self-definition. But if we think about it, the pursuit of universality can’t really be sung as long as the individual states formulate their separation, dissimilarity from the other states and nations in their anthems. So the writing of any universal anthem containing national aspirations and brought to common ground is doomed to be unsuccessful. The software, of course, carries out the operation by decomposing track by track all these anthems. It means that the very first note is the average of all the 193 first notes, the second note is the average of all the 193 second notes, etc. until the last note of the longest anthem. The universal anthem containing every anthem is born as such, but being rendered only out of machinic algorithms, it remains unplayable by traditional instruments and living people.
In the exhibition space tranzit.ro/Cluj, with the contribution of the Agile orchestra (conductor Dalma Lidia Kovács) and composer Cora Miron, the artists will attempt the inevitable human interpretation: they will try to play the composition generated for 12 instruments. At the exhibition, besides the universal anthem interpreted and performed by the orchestra, the scores written by the computer program for 12 instruments can also be viewed.
The artistic cooperative Société Réaliste was founded in 2004 by Gróf Ferenc (1972) and Jean-Baptiste Naudy (1982). Universal Anthem is part of the thematic research project Culture States, which examines the continuous divergence and interlacement between the political entities and the different fields of culture, in parallel with the manifold dependence of the cultural construction. Universal Anthem was first presented by Société Réaliste in the exhibition "Thelema of Nations" at Galerie Jérôme Poggi, Paris.
Since 2012, Société Réaliste has presented its exhibition project "empire, state, building" at MNAC, Bucharest and Ludwig Muzeum, Budapest as well as various solo shows in New York ("A rough guide to Hell", P!), Athens ("The Shape of Orders to Come", Salon de Vortex), Warsaw ("Komfortkampf, Lokal 30) and Paris ("Thelema of Nations", Galerie Jérôme Poggi; "Monotopia", Galerie Michel Rein). In 2013, they also took part in numerous group exhibitions in Aachen, Budapest, Bruxelles, Chennai, Cluj, Dresden, Istanbul, Paris, Rome, or Thessaloniki.
The programme Fiction, Rhetoric, Facts of tranzit.ro started in 2012 and has been developed through exhibitions, workshops, talks and different other events during which reality constructions and their so called natural and essentialist aspect were examined.
At tranzit.ro/Cluj the first cycle of events was launched with the Culture State project and it ends with the exhibition entitled Universal Anthem of the same artistic group - Société Réaliste. It was brought into discussion the ephemeral, unstable, non-eternal, therefore constructed character of certain concepts that generate debate in the region. The conference Culture and Politics of Crises held by Boris Buden and Gaspar Miklos Tamas pointed out that the role of culture no longer fulfills a theoretical and reflexive role, but one of instrumentalization and persuasion.
Pata Rat 2012 - Roma Pushed to the Margins multi-piece event examined the racial discrimination and the issue of stigmatization discussed in relation to a particular case.
The Instrumental entitled exhibition attempted to show how everything gets an instant materialization if there is a proper preparation for it by law, and, on the other hand, how culture became instrumental, and nationalism comfortable in its rhetoric. The general group dynamic was materialized by Daniel Knorr’s Instant Community project. Using a simple method he points out how a community or group is called to life and it behaves, in many respects , as permitted by the creative parameters. A Vocabulary of Revolutionary Gestures is an on-going investigation into the relationship between revolution and body, gesture, and movement.
The main partner of tranzit is ERSTE Foundation.
Media partners: CriticAtac, Paprika Rádió
For more details about the event please e-mail at
office.ro@tranzit.org
attila.tordai@tranzit.org.
Event Facebook
tranzit.ro/Cluj
str. Brassai Sámuel nr.5, Cluj
www.tranzit.org
www.ro.tranzit.org/en
tel: (+4) 0745 182672
fix: (+4) 0364 148968