SUAL Archives | 2015
Bernhard Gál: Beer Ceremony — participative opening performance
Duration: 8‘32“ (excpt)
Type: Recorded live at SUAL 2015
Credits: Audio recording and editing by BG
Beer Ceremony
Beer Ceremony is a performance piece for 8-20 persons blowing on beer bottles. It is loosely based on a section of “Flüssige Musik”, a music-theatrical performance for young people from 2002. The performance starts with full beer bottles. Each performer takes a healthy mouthful, then blows on the rim of the bottle, creating sound. This procedure continues until bottles are empty. A conductor may ‘synchronize’ the performers, throughout the entire piece, or in designated sections. Duration: 10-20 minutes (depending on bottle size and thirst). Previous presentations: Festival City Fables, Taipei, November 2007; Festival Sinapsis, Mendoza, October 2006 (premiere).
[BG]
Bernhard Gál
Austrian artist, composer and musicologist Bernhard Gál is equally at home within the domains of contemporary music, installation art and media art. As of now, Gál has created around 80 sound installations and intermedia art projects, combining sound, light, objects, as well as architectural concepts and video projections into multidimensional and prevalently site-specific art works. He also composes for acoustic instruments and electro-acoustic music. As a laptop musician, Gál has performed extensively on five continents, and worked with numerous musicians of the electronic and improvised music scenes. Since 2006, Gál has also been the creative head behind ‘shut up and listen!’ – Interdisciplinary Festival for Music and Sound Art, in Vienna. Between 2006 and 2007 he taught sound art at the University of Arts in Berlin. From 2010-13 Gál held a research position at the Paris Lodron University Salzburg, in conjunction with the interdisciplinary doctoral college ‘Art and the Public’. Currently he is working on a PhD concerning sound installation art. His work has been made available on ca. 30 audio publications and documented with various catalogue books and DVDs.
[info as of 11/2015]