Shine New York Traces Booklet 2019

POOL SHINE | | NEW YORK TRACES Meredith Monk
NEW YORK TRACES
Meredith Monk
The exploration of the human
voice as an instrument and the
expansion of musical
boundaries established artist
Meredith Monk’s reputation as
a musician and composer.
However, her practice of composing
is not limited to sounds
and tones, but also involves
arranging movement, ojects,
light, text, and cinematic
imagery into interdisciplinary
performances where all these
elements interact.
Between 1966-1994, the
multi-faceted artist produced
six extraordinary silent films for
her stage work and installations.
Some were expanded into
short films, or led to those which
are feature-length.
‚POOL‘ honors the compositional
and choreographic elements of
these films, and brings some of
Meredith Monk‘s seldom seen
work to the Berlin audience.
With the screening of ‚Book of
Days‘ (1988), POOL includes a
feature length film for the very
first time as part of Shine
– New York Traces, a special
format of the festival existing
since 2016. Tracing back to
the artistic field in New York in
the 1960s, past editions of Shine
have already transcended the
boundaries of New York‘s urban
space, revealing intersections of
artistic networks in many ways.
‚Book of Days‘ not only links
different historical and spatial
layers content-wise, but also
points towards Meredith Monk‘s
connections in Europe and
Berlin. In 1980 and 1983, she
presented her pieces ‚Vessel‘ and
‚The Games‘ in collaboration
with the Berliner Schaubühne
am Halleschen Ufer. Some of the
actors involved, later on
re-appeared in ‚Book of Days‘,
that was primarily shot in the
small French town Cordes.
Whenever I
make a film, I’m
struck by
the similarity between
filmmaking and
composing music.
I believe
that images themselves
contain an inherent
musicality, and that
editing them together is
like making music
for the senses.
Meredith Monk