Katharina Struber: Randomised RSO Wien

The Vienna RSO is at the center of the monumental image. Katharina Struber videotaped a rehearsal by the orchestra on November 7, 2012 and created a photographic tableau from thousands of video stills in which the orchestra as a collective and the diverse communication processes between the musicians shape the picture. In this way, movement, time, and interaction can be seen simultaneously in the two-dimensional image space.

Randomised Mi. 7. Nov. 2012 ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien are sixty-four randomly chosen excerpts. These multiples, measuring 29 x 29 cm, are parts of the larger whole; by purchasing them, you are giving yourself, and also the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra a gift for its fiftieth birthday. The net proceeds from the sale of the multiples goes to the acquisition of Katharina Struber’s triptych Mi. 7. Nov. 2012 ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien as a birthday present, and to support the Vienna RSO’s artistic activities.

The curator, Margit Zuckriegl, writes: “Katharina Struber’s photographic tableau illustrates this vulnerable balance between the individuals and the tangible energy of their collective action.” Only rarely is the extent of an orchestra’s existence in the charged field between personality and collective so remarkably clear.

The day that Katharina Struber filmed the Vienna RSO, they were rehearsing American avant-garde composer John Cage’s Quartets I-VIII. In Cage’s work, too, the connection between the autonomy of the individual and the effectiveness of the whole is a defining theme. With the help of chance operations, he attempted to free artistic decisions from the influence of personal taste, and thereby embark upon uncharted musical territory. This is what Katharina Struber has captured. On a random basis, she designated sixty-four excerpts from Mi. 7. Nov. 2012 ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien—snapshots of the whole, which nonetheless display the triptych’s compositional principle.

PURCHASE

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Katharina Struber