Seven spectrogram images

Kata Kovács and Tom O’Doherty · Minute/Year: Seven Years English · Deutsch

Halfsister · Torgauer Str. 1 · 10829 Berlin-Schöneberg

Vernissage: Friday, 16. June, 2023 · 19:00

Exhibition: Saturday, 17.–Wednesday, 21. June, 2023 · Daily 12:00–20:00

Introduction

From June 16. to 21., the artist duo Kata Kovács and Tom O’Doherty will exhibit Minute/Year: Seven Years at Halfsister, a new space for artistic projects in Schöneberg, Berlin. Minute/Year: Seven Years is a visual and sonic archive of Minute/Year, a process-based installation by the artists, which has been ongoing since 2016.

Minute/Year: Seven Years will comprise screenprints, video, photography, and spectrography, and will present the entire archive of over 2500 one-minute recordings generated by Minute/Year over the seven years from 2016 and 2022 — one recording for every day that the piece has been running. It will be a unique opportunity to experience the scope of this ambitious durational work, and the first time that the complete record of this work has been shown in a single space.

Kata Kovacs and Tom O’Doherty have worked since 2011 on exploring combinations of sound, time, and movement. These investigations have led them to present work in diverse locations — from LACMA (Los Angeles) and Serralves Museum (Porto), through to Digital in Berlin’s Kiezsalon series, the Berlin DAT Festival, Hošek Contemporary, and beyond. Minute/Year: Seven Years at Halfsister is the latest step in their ongoing work with these artistic possibilities.

About the space

Halfsister is a space for artistic projects and education in Berlin, run by Ana and Sophia Tabatadze. After opening in November 2022, Halfsister was part of Transmediale Vorspiel program in the beginning of 2023. The space hosts a variety of events, including exhibitions, book presentations, and pop-up markets. The space has also initiated Georgian Sundays, a weekly creative workshop for Georgian-speaking kids in Berlin.

Full details

An image for every day

Minute/Year: Seven Years will present a series of seven large-scale screenprints — one for each year of the work — accompanied by archival photography. Alongside this, it will present a single-channel video installation showing excerpts from the archive of the work, and a large, quasi-sculptural installation, spread across several walls, of receipt-printed rolls of 2,557 spectrogram images generated between 2016 and 2022 — a visual and sonic archive of all the one-minute recordings created by the Minute/Year installation every day over seven years. There will also be a catalogue available for the exhibition, with essays, images, and contextual details related to the work. Last but not least, there will be a receipt printer in the space, printing receipts that will be given to every visitor to the exhibition.

But what is Minute/Year? This work is an ongoing, multi-year, sound-based durational installation, which adds a new layer, every day, for one minute. This work has been physically installed in a different location every year since 2016, and it is currently running every day in SPEKTRUM, a space for process-based art in Rumelange, Luxembourg. The daily process undertaken by the Minute/Year installation goes like this: the sound that is occurring in a space, during a single minute, is recorded. But, simultaneously, the previous day’s recording — of the sound of the same space, 24 hours before — is played back into the space. So, each recording includes a trace of its predecessor, which includes its predecessor in turn, and so on, in a potentially infinite regression. Each day’s minute-long recording is then converted into a spectrogram — an image of the frequencies of the audio — and the two parts are published online. This entire process is automated, and runs daily. This daily process is what makes the images and sounds that form the work’s ongoing archive, and which will be presented in the Minute/Year: Seven Years exhibition.

Layers and repetitions

Minute/Year: Seven Years — and its originating installation — allows for consideration of many interlocking conceptual questions. Can surveillance be turned inside-out? What happens when public and private contexts are collapsed, for one minute each day? Is it possible to simultaneously be a listener and a performer? What ghosts lurk in the constant repetition and layering of sound in a single space, and in a series of spaces, over time? What variations happen in the sounds and actions occurring in starkly different social spaces?

Minute/Year: Seven Years will display, for the first time, the complete archive created by the Minute/Year installation in a single space. The presentation will attempt to mediate and contextualise this accumulating index of recordings, each one of which is a unique moment in time captured in digital amber. These traces, finally presented as a comprehensive record, offer a fascinating insight into this ongoing project, as it continues, day by day, creating its layers.

About the artists

The work of Kata Kovacs and Tom O’Doherty combines elements of durational and time-based art, minimalist movement, and electroacoustic music and sound. They live and work in Berlin, and have worked as a collaborative duo since 2011. Their work has been presented by, among others, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; Serralves Museum, Porto; National Museum of Contemporary Art (Chiado), Lisbon; Kunstquartier Bethanien; Kunstkraftwerk, Leipzig; Digital in Berlin’s Kiezsalon series; Sophiensaele; Hošek Contemporary; and Ausland. They have been recipients of the LACMA Art + Technology Lab Award, and of the Projektförderung and Stipendienprogramm grants of the Musikfonds in Berlin.

Images, video, audio

Promotional video [direct link · embed code · Download]

Series of spectrogram screen-prints

Series of spectrogram screen-prints from Minute/Year: Seven Years, during production at SDW Neukölln in May 2023.

Spectrogram screen-print

Spectrogram screen-print from Minute/Year: Seven Years, during production at SDW Neukölln in May 2023.

Series of seven spectrogram images

Series of seven spectrogram images generated by Minute/Year, one from each year of the seven years from 2016 to 2022 [offset print series, 2022]

View of two screen-printed images

View of two screen-printed images from an earlier series, Minute/Year (2016), as shown at Litehaus Galerie, Neukölln

View of printed receipts

View of printed receipts for recordings from Minute/Year

View of printed receipts

View of printed receipts for recordings from Minute/Year

Time-lapse video of the spectrogram images generated by the first 90 days of recordings in 2020, demonstrating the visual outcomes of the daily process of layering and fading, with accompanying audio taken from recordings generated by the work.

Time-lapse video of the spectrogram images generated by the recordings throughout 2019, demonstrating the visual outcomes of the daily process of layering and fading, with accompanying audio taken from recordings generated by the work.



Links
Contacts
  • Kata Kovács and Tom O’Doherty · Email: mail@kkto.net · Phone: +49 151 1658 3748