EXHIBITIONS

How can a bathtub filled with water be used as a sound transmission medium? How can movement activate the deconstructed sound of a familiar piece of music, and how can human experience and behavior affect a musical outcome? A series of inventive and innovative works and concerts are presented in the frame of the exhibition Visual Symphonies-Labor Beethoven 2020. 

Since 2017, Labor Beethoven 2020, a project supported by Berlin’s Academy of Arts, has been offering to a team of young composers and artists from Tel Aviv, Basel and Thessaloniki, an open forum for artistic exchange and experimentation, allowing them to develop their own extraordinary visions. For a period of three years, participants meet with the lab’s mentors, Caspar Johannes Walter (Basel Academy of Music), 

Ruben Seroussi (Buchmann-Mehta School of Music, Tel Aviv University) and Dimitri Papageorgiou (Department of Music Studies, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki), exploring new perspectives in music and art. Lab Beethoven 2020 is part of the celebrations for the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth. The works produced, are mostly musical compositions, but also sound installations. 

In addition to the nine young composers with their visual artists collaborators and their three mentors, the project engages Thessaloniki-based guest artists, who also created works inspired by the ingenuity of this brilliant and emblematic composer. It is well known that Beethoven successfully secured his independence from the court and employers who, in the classical period, typically intervened, both financially and creatively, in the work of musicians. Beethoven managed to upend the establishment, taking control of his finances and music, which is why he is considered as the first successful freelance musician. 

The works presented in the exhibition mostly consist of original sound installations and sculptures. In these interactive environments,

human action and interaction play an important role in the audiovisual outcome. They also explore an alternative approach to the coupling of image and sound and the relationship between artist and viewer, with the latter also assuming the role of performer, exploring the limits and experimentations of audiovisual perception. Moreover, the works raise issues concerning the conditions of art production, the opening up of art creation to experimentation, the miscegenation of artforms, and the indiscernible limits and institutional framework in which they are presented. 

Artists: Vasilis Alexandrou, Giorgos Gerontides, Nikos Varytimiadis,  Katerina Velliou, Dimitris Maronidis (musician), Fani Bountouroglou, Thanasis Sabaziotis

Composers: Batya Frenklakh, Manolis Ekmetsoglou, Anda Kryeziu, Adrian Nagel, Eleni Ralli, Guy Rauscher, Thanos Sakellaridis

Collaborators: Eva Gentner, Andrea Heilrath, Justin Robinson   

MOMus-Experimental Center for the Arts (Warehouse B1, Thessaloniki Port)

Opening days & hours: Tue-Wed-Fri-Sat-Sun 10:00-18:00, Thu 10:00-22:00, Mon closed

Artistic Director of Beethoven 2020 (Labor Beethoven 2020)

Caspar Johannes Walter

Organization 

Akademie der Künste Berlin

Co-organization   

MOMus-Experimental Center for the Arts 

With the collaboration of the d of Music Studies, AUTh  

Organization & Coordination  

Sonia Lescene

Dimitri Papageorgiou 

Eirini Papakonstantinou

Eleni Ralli 

Exhibition Curator 

Eirini Papakonstantinou

Laboratory Mentors & Conference Organization Committee 

Caspar Johannes Walter (Academy of Music, Basel), Ruben Seroussi (University of Music, Tel Aviv), Dimitri Papageorgiou (Department of Music Studies, AUTh)