The title UNDERPRESSURE refers to the process of pressure equalisation, in which the same pressure is created in two or more separate spaces filled with the same medium. With the site-specific installation Esther Mathis and Riikka Tauriainen create a room, which is able to reverse or dissolve the perceived physical attributes - pressure from above, resistance from below. The installation is reinforced by Kay Zhang’s soundscape, conceived for the exhibition.

This exhibition piece subtly breaks up architectural dimensions. Wavy lights are drawn on the walls - reminiscent of a sea floating above our heads.  Delicate plants grow from the ceiling and reinforce the twisted feeling of the room. Traces from the past are made visible and dialogues are conducted with associations of historical narratives, enabling new perspectives on time, materials, physical contexts, natural and artificial spaces.

This exhibition was hosted and in collaboration with the site specific OXYD in Winterthur, Switzerland, also formally known as the Kornhaus.

UNDERPRESSURE

Performed by Sascha Armbruster, Johannes Schwarz and Gary Berger
Recorded live at ZKM–Karlsruhe Germany on June 24th, 2010

Improvisation: Sascha Armbruster saxophone,  Johannes Schwarz contraforte, Gary Berger electronics

The narrator in Jorge Luis Borges' 1945 story "The Aleph" describes a remarkable singularity his friend discovers under his cellar stairs: the titular point where, if one lays in just the right position, the universe can be experienced in its entirety:

"Each thing (a mirror’s face, let us say) was infinite things, since I distinctly saw it from every angle of the universe. I saw the teeming sea; I saw daybreak and nightfall; I saw the multitudes of America; I saw a silvery cobweb in the center of a black pyramid; I saw a splintered labyrinth (it was London); I saw, close up, unending eyes watching themselves in me as in a mirror; I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me...I saw the circulation of my own dark blood; I saw the coupling of love and the modification of death; I saw the Aleph from every point and angle, and in the Aleph I saw the earth and in the earth the Aleph and in the Aleph the earth; I saw my own face and my own bowels; I saw your face; and I felt dizzy and wept, for my eyes had seen that secret and conjectured object whose name is common to all men but which no man has looked upon — the unimaginable universe."

At the end of the story, the narrator describes other Alephs that might exist in the world:

"The Faithful who gather at the mosque of Amr, in Cairo, are acquainted with the fact that the entire universe lies inside one of the stone pillars that ring its central court...No one, of course, can actually see it, but those who lay an ear against the surface tell that after some short while they perceive its busy hum...The mosque dates from the seventh century; the pillars come from other temples of pre-Islamic religions, since, as ibn-Khaldun has written: ‘In nations founded by nomads, the aid of foreigners is essential in all concerning masonry.’"

The mysterious column and its inner cosmos are imagined in several different ways: as the long, closed tube of the baritone saxophone formed by fingering the lowest note on the instrument, the harmonic series on this note (from which a majority of the piece’s pitches are derived), and the "alif" character, the vertical first letter of the Arabic alphabet that shares a lineage with the story’s title. Many of the melodic contours in the piece were loosely traced from Arabic orthography, translations of a few phrases from Borges' story.

Foreign Masonry (2014)

Sobre la expresión del movimiento (for soprano saxophone)

Live at London Ear Festival 19th march 2015.
Emilio Checchini: Clarinet

Pungi-Ophis-Zyclos (2014)

Aufnahme der Uraufführung am 25.04.2015 mit dem Folkwang Sinfonieorchester unter der Leitung von Frank Cramer

polarlys - Prolog

junkyard piece I (for an ensemble of musicians and found objects) [2014/15]

*live recording of the premiere with ensemble recherche (20.11.2015 - Freiburg, DE)

junkyard piece I (version 1), 2014/15 *live recording (premiere), ensemble recherche

Notice for the premiere of Der Seismograph Leo Collin, July 2016. Written within the framework Manifeste, IRCAM.

Recipe to built a seismograph

#Ingredients# (5-6 min of music) 
for 5 persons + sampler
- ascendant and descendant lines (sawtooth)
- exponential crescendi
- horizontal and vertical lines. (switch on/off)
- reference pitches : do/sol
- a long siren
- A sentence about volcan, if possible poetic.


My suggestion : Avec entêtement je poursuivais mon forage vers le noyau de feu que je croyais sentir, comme un volcan, sous le rocher de son silence. from Verwirrung der Gefühle (1927) Stefan Zweig
#Directions#
This piece sounds like an eruption report, done by an imaginary seismograph. Enjoy! 
Preparation : first part (before the eruption)
Pre-warning : second part (the eruption)
Pause : third part (transmission of the eruption to the security siren)
Cooking : fourth part (suite of the eruption, volcanic bombs)
Leave to cool : coda (end of the eruption, problem of communication )

UNDERPRESSURE

Kay Zhang

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