by Red cell
Charlemagne Palestine, the well known minimalist composer of such works as Strumming Music, Four Manifestations on Six Elements and A Sweet Quasimodo between Black Vampire Butterflies: For Maybeck, was also a ground breaking video artist who helped explore the earliest hand-held video technology. His new solo exhibition at the Wiels Museum in Brussels, is part of the museum’s retrospective of the past 50 years of performance art captured on video called, DO /REDO /UNDO. This rare selection of video performances will feature works that belong to the collections of MoMA, New York, The Centre Pompidou, Paris and will span Palestine’s entire video career.
The woks included explore the physical and acoustic limits of space, the body of the performer and his voice and severely tests the technical contingencies and limits of video from it’s inception. These ritualistic, spell-binding videos will include: Body Music I (1973), Body Music II (1974), Furnace Motion Studies (1974), Running Outburst (1975), Island Song (1976), Island Monologue (1976), Ritual in the vacuum (2001).
Weils Museum, Brussels – 6 May to 6 June.
And, as a special treat, here is Palestine’s famous Island Song, for your viewing pleasure:
http://theendofbeing.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/chilton-congress.mp4