Vocal performances / audio-visual installation
“I see my interventions as part of the landscape, in which the entire environment and its contexts are involved” Janneke van der Putten
Directed to the Sun “is a vocal performance and audio-visual installation by the Dutch artist and vocalist Janneke van der Putten. The work was created in 2015 and will be further developed in Cologne as a “work in progress” performative and trialogical with the two curators.
In the 2015 project, van der Putten investigated how human rituals relate to certain locations and moments of cosmological phenomena and how they can manifest themselves in sound, such as the solstice, which has an impact on the human body. The solstice marks a turning point, i. e. when time changes its direction and the days become shorter or longer. At the solstice of 21 December 2014, the artist travelled to the Casma Desert in northern Lima, Peru for the Chanquillo Sundial. Together with the collective Aloardi (Gabriel Castillo, Chrs Galarreta & Gisella Lopez), the wind of the desert landscape was brought into harmony with textile objects and the singing voice of van der Putten. The performance on the coast of Lima was continued together with the participants in a workshop “Voice and Space”.
Janneke van der Putten – Directed to the Sun “is the third exhibition in the series” Performance, Collaboration, Process “, which is being developed by Jari Ortwig, curator Q18, and guest curator Georg Dietzler, curator for sound art and experimental music projects, together with the artist. Together with the participants of the workshop in Cologne, a performance will be developed for the finissage.
Directed to the Sun “was created in 2015 as part of the Residence Aloardi and Tupac, funded by Mondriaan Fund and opened with the solo exhibition” All Begins With A “at TENT in Rotterdam.
For more than ten years now, Janneke van der Putten’s own voice has been an essential medium for her interactions with landscape, space and contexts, in connection with natural phenomena, mythologies, cycles and time. Van der Putten’s work often differs from purely auditory performances in terms of visual aspects. Documentary media (video, photography, drawing), but also textile works and spatial installations transport their processes of experience and association into the exhibition space. The vocal performances are performed purely acoustically (unamplified) as well as in connection with electronics, depending on the location of architectural resonances such as reverberation and echo.
In addition to her studies of textile design in Amsterdam and “Artistic Research” in The Hague (until 2013), Janneke van der Putten studied the northern Indian song “Dhrupad” with Amelia Cuni and Marianne Svašek in Berlin and Rotterdam (2009-14). Since then, the technique learned has been essential for her understanding of the voice as a physical experience rather than as a medium for speech or even singing.
“How can I travel with my voice, over jaw, tongue, saliva and breath?”
Janneke van der Putten is currently funded by CBK Rotterdam.
During the nxnw-festival, both presented sound performances in public space in the Agnesviertel and Ebertplatz as part of their sound research in Invisible Architecture, a collaboration with the composer and musician Chrs Galarreta (PE).
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