Exhibitions at Jan Mot

Tris Vonna-Michell Wasteful Illuminations-Jan Mot 2015
05/12/15 - 30/01/16

Tris Vonna-Michell
Wasteful Illuminations: Distracted Listening

07/11/13 - 08/02/14

Tris Vonna-Michell
Postscript II (Berlin)

12/09/09 - 24/10/09

Tris Vonna-Michell
Auto-Tracking: Ongoing Configurations

07/05/08
Tris Vonna-Michell
Auto-Tracking: Ongoing Segments
Part of the Oral Culture series

Works

Tris Vonna-Michell Chopin
Tris Vonna Michell Chopin
Tris Vonna-Michell
Chopin (Alma Verse), 2018
film and sound installation
super 16mm film, color, silent (9 minutes 5 seconds)
2-channel sound track (6 minutes 47 seconds and 12 minutes 42 seconds)
edition of 2 and 1 A.P.
Installation view at Jan Mot, 2018, audio excerpt

The film installation Chopin (Alma Verse), 2018, brings together scenes of a tableau of staged objects, ephemera, slide projections and spoken word. In a way, the emergence of the film came from a necessity, a need to capture and timeline the disbanding threads of Finding Chopin (2005-2018). The idea behind making such a film evolved from a residency and having the opportunity to be in the city while an exhibition of mine was up. I visited the show sporadically during my residency and witnessed how quickly and unpredictably certain slides would fade, discolour, image alignments wander, projections lose focus and how the objects and prints on the table would wilt, disappear, re-appear and collect dust.

It was not only the obsolescence and ephemerality that Finding Chopin embodied or the impermanence of my performative self which induced the need to start filming. I conceded that all the parts that kept this work together were just about intact, held together by slender measures and by my performative presence. Chopin (Alma Verse) has a different constellation of form and imagery in relation to my past performances, yet both were aligned and determined by the presence of time (whether it be memory, analogue film or an egg-timer). With every iteration of Finding Chopin – idiosyncratic searching and researching, and not having a written script – there was always this sense of loss, misalignment or forgetting. Initially I had hundreds of objects, documents and photographs which belonged to this work, but gradually only a handful remained. There was a fragility to this way of performing, and with how the material components emerged, albeit temporally, for each new iteration. After many aborted attempts at recording a new soundtrack for the film, I inevitably lost my voice. My daughter, Alma, was sat by my side, she continued from where I left off. The unedited recording of her bilingual annotations on my last iteration of Finding Chopin became an impromptu endnote to the work. (TVM)

Tris Vonna-Michell
Punctuations & Perforations, 2016
16 mm film transferred to full HD video with sound on speakers
11 minutes 15 seconds
edition of 3 and 1 A.P.
Installation views at Jan Mot, 2018

Punctuations & Perforations, shot on 16mm film, is a fictive-documentary film observing the process of slide duplication in a photo lab. The film paraphrases the necessary steps for duplication and processing of slides. Over the last decade there has been a shift concerning certain productions from industrial scale to something akin to hobby-level and amateur scale (in a small shed for example). The protagonist in the film is impersonating someone who is doing highly skilled work, which has now become much less sought after. Slide duplication has always been the most intangible element within my exhibition making process. The act of duplicating, emulating, replicating is a perquisite of the digital. Yet to do so analogically has now become not only a scarcity, but an anachronistic act. Punctuations & Perforations encapsulates the revolving processes and liminal labours and armatures of such an endeavour. (TVM)

Tris Vonna-Michell Wasteful Illuminations-Jan Mot 2015

Tris Vonna-Michell
Wasteful Illuminations: Distracted Listening, 2015
Mixed media installation consisting of multi-track sound work on four loudspeakers, three aquariums on a shelf, inkjet print and a bench
13 min. 8 sec. (audio), 31,5 x 25,4 x 25,4 cm (aquarium, each), 110 x 35 cm (shelf), 59 x 108,3 cm (image) minutes
edition of 1 and 1 A.P.
Installation view at Jan Mot, 2015

Wasteful Illuminations: Distracted Listening consists of a multi-track soundwork, aquariums and inkjet prints. The soundwork began in 2008, originating from field-recordings made in Japan. The field-recordings were edited and transcribed into a score for producing a compilation of speech-based audio poems. The short-duration audio poems evolved into one sound composition; a phonetic travelogue of transient spaces encountered in Japan during the summer of 2008. The majority of the field-recordings were made nocturnally and in and around specifically chosen spaces and enclosures. Underpasses, park life, viaducts, benches, beaches, insects, foliage, water fixtures, railway tracks, stations, cubicles, alleyways, shafts, ponds, pools, pleasure domes, vending aisles, slot machines, shopping arcades, docks, boats, bamboo blinds, road sweepers, shuttle rails, wash rooms, waiting lounges, lobbies, phone booths – these were the main sources for composing the score and subsequent sound composition; a combination of Japanese and English speech utterances and rhythmic audio poems. (TVM)

Tris Vonna-Michell audio poems: distracted listening, 2015
Tris Vonna-Michell audio poems: distracted listening, 2015
Tris Vonna-Michell
audio poems: distracted listening, 2015
installation with a telex machine, 80 35mm slides, digital sound
13 minutes 10 seconds
edition of 1 and 1 A.P.
Installation views at Jan Mot, 2015, audio excerpt

audio poems: distracted listening started in 2008, originating from field-recordings made in Japan. The field-recordings were edited and transcribed into a score for producing a compilation of speech-based audio poems. The short-duration audio poems gradually evolved into one sound composition; a phonetic travelogue of transient spaces encountered in Japan during the Summer of 2008.

The majority of the field-recordings were made nocturnally and in and around specifically chosen spaces and enclosures. Underpasses, park life, viaducts, benches, beaches, insects, foliage, water fixtures, railway tracks, stations, cubicles, alleyways, shafts, ponds, pools, pleasure domes, vending aisles, slot machines, shopping arcades, docks, boats, bamboo blinds, road sweepers, shuttle rails, wash rooms, waiting lounges, lobbies, phone booths – these were the main sources for composing the score and subsequent sound composition, a combination of Japanese and English speech utterances and rhythms. A few years later the sound work was synchronized to a sequence of projected 35mm slides and accompanied by a shelf installation; layering various sets of documentation and ephemera, in an attempt to chronicle and displace the places encountered, captured and recaptured. (TVM)

Tris Vonna-Michell
Capitol Complex / Le Capitole de Chandigarh, 2014
video, colour, sound
edition of 3 and 1 A.P.

Capitol Complex (2012 - ) evolves around a manuscript consisting of four acts based on four characters, which serves as an underlying blueprint for the work. The story is led by Traveller, who extends his leisurely strolls of the Indian city of Chandigarh into the night, in order to experience its unique urban architecture with greater intensity and anxiety. After his nocturnal explorations, he grows weary and changes his course from architectural appreciation to searching for crevices and enclosures. Urban fixtures of obstruction, surveillance, and derailment direct his passages, until a shift in perception occurs.

Capitol Complex is set in Chandigarh, India, once the future city and the architect Le Corbusier’s most momentous assignment, today the capital city for two states, Punjab and Haryana. Le Corbusier envisaged the government headquarters, the Capitol Complex, as a sacred place to match the Acropolis, where citizens could meditate on the interconnected spiritual meanings embedded in his architecture, landscape fixtures and visions of democracy.

Tris Vonna-Michell Postscript II (Berlin), 2013
Tris Vonna-Michell Postscript II (Berlin), 2013

Tris Vonna-Michell
Postscript II (Berlin), 2013
2 channel slide projection, sound
8 minutes
edition of 1 and 1 A.P.
Installation view at Jan Mot, 2013

Biography

Tris Vonna-Michell

Born in 1982 in Southend on Sea, United Kingdom
Lives and works in Stockholm

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Bibliography