Paul Amlehn: Dream and Trauma, photographic works published in Static 7: Catastrophe

Paul Amlehn's photographic works: Traum und Trauma (Dream and Trauma) will be published next month in Static 7: Catastrophe. Static is the inhouse journal of the London Consortium, a collaboration between the Architectural Association, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, the Science Museum, and the TATE.

"The catastrophe takes care of everything: from Greek tragedy to sci-fi, from ethics to (an)aesthetics, from architecture to game theory, from opera to snuff. Static 7 aims to reconstruct the contradictions and oppositions of the catastrophic narrative, which is peripheral yet at the centre of all things, consigned to the past and always to be reinstated.

Static 7 intends to pace the epistemic disaster zone, reading its debris through contributions which explore the notion of catastrophe in literature, architecture, art, politics, science, music and economics, drawing on sources as diverse as Aeschylus and Virilio, Kant and Beckett, financial risk analysis and nuclear reactor meltdown."

www.static.londonconsortium.com

Paul Amlehn is New Zealand's most successful emerging artist. In his first year of exhibiting, his work was placed in the collections of both the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and documenta archives, Kassel. The following year, his work was exhibited in the Collateral Events of the 51st Venice Biennale, making him the first New Zealand artist to do so in the Biennale's 110-year history.

Amlehn has since gone on to exhibit in: France, Italy, Spain, Mexico, Agentina, America, and the Balkans, with shows in Austria and Poland scheduled for later this year. He is currently creating new performance, sound art, and video works with English avant-garde musician Robert Fripp (King Crimson, David Bowie, Brian Eno). Extracts from Amlehn and Fripp's sound art works can be heard in the online art journal Art Anomaly:

www.artanomaly.com

The 1st annual Cork Street Charity Open Art Exhibition is an international exhibition of contemporary fine art held to showcase both emerging and established artists while raising funds and increasing the profile of a selected charity.

The chosen charity for 2008 is Children with Aids Charity. CWAC is a national UK charity with the aim of working towards a future without poverty or prejudice for children and the families of those infected or affected by HIV/AIDS.

Paul Amlehn is donating print works and a limited edition signed CD of his work with Robert Fripp to the Children with AIDS Charity exhibition in London.

The exhibition will take place at the prestigious Gallery in Cork Street, London and will run from Thursday 31 July - Saturday 9 August 2008.

There will be a private view and champagne reception on Wednesday 30 July, 7-9pm. Tickets for the private view are £30/each or £50/couple and must be purchased in advance.

www.corkstreetopenexhibition.com

THE SEVEN WORDS
By Paul Amlehn
Music By Robert Fripp

Structure:
Prologue: Traum und Trauma (Part One)
Act 1: Untitled / Queer Space Symmetrical
Act 2: Kriya / At The End of Time
Act 3: Ophiuchus Improvisation / Queer Reflection Harmonic Minor
Act 4: Untitled / Schizoid Fantasia
Epilogue: Traum und Trauma (Part Two)

Duration:
Prologue: Video - 16.18 Minutes
Act 1: Spoken Word / Music - 6.06 Minutes
Act 2: Spoken Word / Music - 13.34 Minutes
Act 3: Spoken Word / Music - 5.19 Minutes
Act 4: Spoken Word / Music - 9.06 Minutes
Epilogue: Video - 16.10 Minutes

Paul Amlehn

TRAUMA AS PRIMA MATERIA
By Paul Amlehn

The point of origin of my work is autobiographical. From this core of personal experience, the embryo of the work is cross-fertilized with other philosophical and conceptual notions, such as those of Nietzsche and Artaud. Although the work proceeds from this intimate and intense experience of self, it is eminently universal, tapping into the underground tributaries of the collective unconscious that unite mankind as a whole.

Several catalytic and cataclysmic events have brought forth significant works in my oeuvre. Namely, the birth and death of my first son, the murder and rape of my step-sister, childhood abuse, and the entropic trajectories and eventual dissolution of important relationships in my life. Embodied within these events are the seeds of beauty, a beauty closely aligned with suffering, a beauty at once terrifying and revelatory.

Here is the notion of trauma as prima materia.

This base matter, this chaos, this swirling darkness, this "blackness blacker than black," is also the fecund earth from which the first shoots of paradise grow. Anguish, despair, loss, pathos, are Saturnine ore ready to be transmuted in the crucible of an art process that is a journey towards transcendence and a rebirth of the senses, but a bloody one, borne not of grace, but of passion, as the Via Dolorosa and the Stations of the Cross.

My work references, illumines, and draws upon a panoply of source material and thematic components: alchemy, biology, cosmology, physics, mysticism, et alia. Chief among these components, is biographical matter (matter, from the Latin mater, mother). This matter may be directly addressed in the work, with eviscerating and desolating force, or, may be subsumed, until only the faintest trace of a psychological imprint remains.

There is also a relevant intersection between my visual art work and current theories of physics, in particular: quantum theory, string theory, and M-theory. These cutting-edge scientific notions resonate with certain ancient religious belief systems and their view of multiple universes occupying the same space-time continuum. In this context, the current chemically-altered photographic work may be considered as portals into the multiverse, brief glimpses into a previously unseen realm of being and existence. Polaroid film is highly sensitive to electromagnetic waves, and when exposed to chemicals, heat, electricity, magnetism, and radiation; startling images are revealed. These images, conjured forth from the ether, are both phantasmal and familiar, each a secret door to a possible beyond.

Catharsis, in the Aristotelean psychological and emotional sense of the word, is an important aspect in my work. And, of equal import, is the notion that this lexicon of images: images of fecundity and putrefaction, of trial and rebirth, suffering and joy, and ultimately, of being; bring forth a catharsis in the viewer as well as in the work's creator. This is the catharsis invoked by the tragedian in his "goat-song." The dual role of the artist as a sacrificial offering and a mouth-piece of the gods.

There is also a resonance with the mystical and psychological notions of Carl Jung. From Gnosticism, to archetypes, dream, mythology, and alchemy, there is a transposition and interpolation of conceptual membranes between Jung's work and my own. One significant point of commonality is the manner in which the disciplines of science, mysticism, and religion (and all their related subtypes) are fused into a cohesive meta-theory, one which addresses the complex and multivalent facets of our existence. In this sense, my work may be considered as an exploration of actualities, an investigation into the very nature of what we conceive of as reality itself.

A surging of space-time foam. Cellular cruelty. The theatre of the dream image made manifest.

The artist is a conduit for the myriad forces that are constantly struggling within us asking to be released.

SOUNDSCAPES BY ROBERT FRIPP

In the late 1970s, Robert Fripp worked with a technique termed Frippertronics, in solo performances featuring audio loops created with electric guitar and interconnected tape recorders.

In the 1990s Fripp revamped the Frippertronics system by incorporating digital electronics in lieu of tape recorders and effects pedals, renaming it Soundscapes.

Technology:

The new digital technology included digital delay devices, digital audio processors, and guitar synthesizers.

The audio flow would typically be:

A guitarist (e.g. Fripp) ...

The energy of which is transmitted to an electric guitar with a guitar synthesizer pickup/interface (e.g. the Roland GK-3) connecting to a guitar synthesizer module (e.g. the GR-33) ...

The output of this being routed to a digital audio processor to add guitar effects to the sound ...

This then is routed to an array of digital delay units (e.g. TC Electronic TC2290). The digital delays are used to create audio loops of various lengths of time. The common method being that one unit would be used to create one complete loop, then another unit to create a different loop. These loops would then be combined into the final audio output, being faded in and out by Fripp during the performance. The loops might not necessarily be heard during their creation, but may be faded in gradually ...

The audio from the digital delays would then be processed by more digital electronics (e.g. the Eventide Harmonizer), then becoming the final composition.

Art:

Fripp states on the Disicpline Global Mobile web site that Soundscapes: "has the aim of finding ways in which intelligence and music, definition and discovery, courtesy and reciprocation may enter into the act of music for both musician and audience".

Because Fripp has also stated that the intent is for active listening by the audience, it can be argued that Soundscapes may not be considered as a type of ambient music, as it is sometimes described.

Fripp has released a number of records that he called "Soundscapes," including 1999, Radiophonics, A Blessing of Tears, That Which Passes, November Suite, and The Gates of Paradise.

PAUL AMLEHN - CV

Selected Exhibitions

IX Bienal Internacional de Cuenca, Municipal Museum of Modern Art, Cuenca, Ecuador, 2007.

Synthetic Zero artfilmperformance, Temboo, New York, America, 2006.

Conversions, The Green Corner, New York, America, 2006.

51st Biennale di Venezia, The Experience of Art / Always a Little Further, Collateral Events, Isola Virtuale, Venice, Italy, 2005.

2nd Biennale Internationale d'Arte di Ferrara, Castello Estense, Ferrara, Italy, 2004.

Visions of Excess, Grad Kodeljevo, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2004.

Play III, Art Museum of Junin, Junin, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2004.

Contemporary.art Nonstop.Madrid.04, Pabelleo de la Pipa - Recinto Ferial de Casa de Campo, Madrid, Spain, 2004.

A.V. Text-Fest 7, Teatro de la Cultura de Mexicali, Mexicali, Mexico, 2004.

Festival Signes de Nuit, Cinema Le Balzac, Paris, France, 2004.

ArtExpo.Mexico.04, Observatorio Centro Experimental, Michoachan, Mexico, 2004.

Collections

The Museum of Modern Art, New York, America

documenta archives, Kassel, Germany

Forthcoming Exhibitions

Mowa Ciala, The Workshop, Bialystok, Poland, June 6 - July 12, 2008.

FEAR, DUO Arts Center, Manhattan, New York, America, June 19 -21, 2008.

Static.07 Launch, TATE Modern, London, England, June 21, 2008.

Cork Street Open Exhibition, Children With AIDS Charity Benefit, The Cork Street Gallery, London, England, July 31 - August 9, 2008.

Traum und Trauma, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, New Zealand, September 20, 2008.

nomad.theatre // LABfactory, Vienna, Austria, TBA, 2008.