Michael Curran Archive
Posted by Michael Curran on October 27th, 2008 - Read comments and add your own
I want to riff on birds, riffing as a way of exploring morphic resonance between different kinds of material. Out there in the world, in art, music and literature, birds are ubiquitous. See Max Ernst’s Two Children Are Threatened By A Lark or re-run Hitchcock’s The Birds. Listen to Patti Smith’s Birdland while reading The Raven by Poe. Recall the Four and Twenty Blackbirds Baked in a Pie, Tennessee William’s Sweet Bird of Youth, Jim Morrison’s Bird of Prey, Leda’s Swan, Coleridge’s Albatross and perhaps the saddest bird of all Lewis Carroll’s Dodo. The augurs of ancient Rome would interpret the will of the gods by studying the behaviour of birds, their flight patterns, eating habits and songs. I make no such soothsayer’s claim for my activities, which are more akin to an open play of fanciful pattern matching.
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Posted by LoveHowlMuse on November 15th, 2007 - Add a comment
Michael Curran’s video work Look What They Done To My Song is touring to the Arnolfini in Bristol, from November 17th 2007 to January 6th 2008, 10am to 6pm, entrance free.
Featuring a number of musical performances played out against an improvised theatrical backdrop, the work investigates how music and songs become a means of defining our experiences as we use them to relax or inform our moods and emotions. During the editing process the recorded footage of the performances has been manipulated, creating a series of new rhythms, counterpoints and silences, which explore the construction of songs and narrativity and provide an atmosphere almost like that of a séance.
The songs are sung by three performers, each from a different genre. The work takes its name from a 60s folksong by Melanie Safka - a song that could suggest the unravelling of a singer and song. Look What They Done To My Song was commissioned by Matt’s Gallery, London, and will be accompanied by a free publication that includes a CD of the performances.
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Posted by LoveHowlMuse on September 14th, 2007 - Read comments and add your own
Matt’s Gallery, London
19th September - 18th November 2007 / Wednesday - Sunday, 12 noon - 6pm
42-44 Copperfield Road, London E3 4RR / Mile End Tube
Telephone: (020) 8983 1771 / Website: www.mattsgallery.org
This is the first time that Michael Curran has shown at Matt’s Gallery and is his first solo exhibition in London. For this new commission Michael Curran presents a site-specific installation exploring filmed spectacle, performance and the dynamic that is created between a sculptural composition and video projection.
Three songs - The Devil is Afraid of Music, What Have They Done To My Song Ma? and How Does It Feel To Feel? - were performed and filmed in the exhibition space of Matt’s Gallery making it into an open recording session and film set for a three-day period. Through the subsequent editing process the material was subjected to radical temporal shifts in the form of loops, overlays, speeding, slowing and repetition creating a series of rhythms, counterpoints and silences, all exploring the construction of song and narrative expectation forming a drama (or crisis) of performance. The songs themselves are literally at stake, their survival questioned through these processes of translation.
The overall feeling is that of a séance in which the enquiry is: what have they done to my song?
This exhibition is accompanied by a free publication, the 14th in the second series of Matt’s Gallery booklets.
The film Look What They Done To My Song will tour to the Arnolfini, Bristol.
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