DANI GAL, CHRISTIAN NAUJOKS — Sans Percussions
Performance – Concert – Premiere
Presented by Yellow Solo at R50
Ritterstrasse 50, 10969 Berlin
(Club room in the basement of the residential building)
October 11, Saturday
Door opens: 8:00 pm
Starts: 8:30 pm
Donation-based admission: 8-12,-
Sonic dialogue in a new constellation:
Dani Gal uses a constantly evolving system that brings different sound sources—such as live radio, recorded sounds, and acoustic instruments outfitted with specially designed motors—into dialogue with each other. For example, when switching between stations on the radio receiver, the shift in sound level affects the movement of a record player that by result manipulates the sound on the record but also triggers oscillators. In relation to one another the sources, which the player has only partial control over, create an indeterminate musical composition.
Christian Naujoks plays an alternately tuned electric guitar with an electric bow and bottleneck slide; he layers the resulting long notes to create ambiguous harmonies and also incorporates pink/white noise and other sounds often used in tinnitus relief therapies. Through the interplay of consonance and dissonance, Naujoks blurs the boundaries between internal and external acoustic stimuli, sonic illusions, natural and synthetically generated tones. Culturally charged or standardized typical sounds often appear distorted, stretched, emptied, or shifted in his pieces.
Dani Gal (b. 1975, Jerusalem) lives and works in Berlin. Gal studied at Bezalel Academy for Art and Design in Jerusalem, Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste Städelschule in Frankfurt and Cooper Union in New York. His films and installations have been shown at the 54th Venice Biennale; Istanbul Biennale; New Museum, New York; Kunsthalle St. Gallen, Switzerland; The Jewish Museum, New York; Berlinale Forum Expanded; Kunsthaus Zurich; Kunsthalle Wien; Documenta 14; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Club TransMediale Festival Berlin; and Polygon Gallery, North Vancouver in 2024. In 2019 Gal was artist-in-residence with Blood Mountain Projects and research fellow at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute, and in 2024-25 Gal was a fellow inHerit in the Centre for Advanced Studies – Heritage in Transformation, Humboldt University, Berlin.
FURTHER INFORMATION ABOUT THE ARTIST
Christian Naujoks’ (b. 1980, Lübeck) work has been heard and seen in a wide range of contexts, from nightclubs to concert halls, art venues and the theatre, including Kunstverein Nürnberg; Center for Practice-based Art Studies, Copenhagen; Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin; Galerie Max Mayer, Düsseldorf; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, CA; Sonic Somatic, Florence; Münchner Kammerspiele; The Liverpool Biennial; Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf; Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg; Skulptur Projekte Münster; Meakusma Festival, Eupen; Neuer Berliner Kunstverein and Royal Academy of Arts, London. He released three solo albums on Berlin-based label Dial Records. Christian Naujoks was awarded the Villa Romana Prize in 2019.
FURTHER INFORMATION ABOUT THE ARTIST
Special thanks to Maya Schweizer, Clemens von Wedemeyer and to the residents of Ritterstrasse 50.