Prismatic Park: Limpe Fuchs
Madison Square Park
New York, NY 10010
Drawing from an elaborate installation of acoustic instruments—pendelstrings, hardwood and granite stone rows, viola, voice, soprano timpani, cymbals and a variety of tube, metal and snare drums—Limpe Fuchs will transform her stage into a sanctuary for sound. Through a series of spontaneous improvisations and studied compositions, interactive demonstrations of her instruments and scheduled workshops for players both trained and untrained, her presence will foster a fertile web of feedback between different people and musicians in contact with their own instruments or with hers.
As part of her Prismatic Park residency, Limpe Fuchs will lead a series of workshops in the park, four in total (October 3-6 at 3 PM). These will be rare opportunities to directly enter her unique sonic universe. Participants are invited to bring their own instruments or use Fuchs' own self-made percussion instruments (lithophone, stringed pendulum drums, assorted drums). Fuchs will break players into small groups and facilitate guided improvisations and listening exercises (she calls these "communicative arrangements"), adding her own voice, viola, wooden horn, or bamboo flute. Participants of all levels of musical experience are invited to register, and are invited to take part in Fuchs' final Prismatic Park performance on Sunday, October 8th. Rehearsals for Sunday's performance will be from 2-4 and workshops are limited to 10 participants so please RSVP in advance to secure a spot.
Tuesday, October 3rd
1:00 Performance
3:00 - 4:00 Workshop (RSVP limited to 10)
Wednesday, October 4th
1:00 Performance
3:00 - 4:00 Workshop (RSVP limited to 10)
7:00 Film Screening & Talk at Goethe-Institut NY
Thursday, October 5th
1:00 Performance
3:00 - 4:00 Workshop (RSVP limited to 10)
Friday, October 6th
1:00 Performance
3:00 - 4:00 Workshop (RSVP limited to 10)
Sunday, October 8th
4:00 Final Performance
Prismatic Park features three large sculptures of painted wood and prismatic glass by Josiah McElheny on view from June 13th through October 8th at Madison Square Park. These minimal, almost architectural forms are intended to create new performance spaces within the park, each functioning as an open stage-like platform for a different medium curated by each of three nonprofit organizations. Along with Danspace Project and Poets House, Blank Forms has been invited to commission ambitious new work that summons the potential for imagination, creativity, and performance inspired by the spontaneous audiences and chance encounters that only a public place can offer. Inhabiting a curvilinear, translucent blue sound wall for six weeklong residencies that may include rehearsals and workshops in addition to performances will be Lea Bertucci, Ánde Somby, Joe McPhee & Graham Lambkin, Shelley Hirsch, Matana Roberts, and Limpe Fuchs. Full schedule and details coming soon.
Limpe Fuchs is a German sound artist and instrument builder whose vibrant performances develop from a real time engagement with the ecology of the space at hand. Using wood and granite stone rows, ringing bronze within pendulum string instruments and employing the percussion, viola and voice she studied at the Munich Conservatory she sensitizes the process of hearing through an exploration of music-making as a part of everyday life. An original member of ‘70s Krautrock duo Anima Sound, Limpe and then husband sculptor Paul Fuchs embodied a radical form of free living, farming and building instruments like the Fuchshorn, Fuchszither and Fuchsbass at a professional metal workshop in their Pfarrhof—a thousand-year-old former priest house—in rural Bavaria. In 1971 they hitched a handmade mobile home and stage to an old Hanomag tractor and toured Europe bringing their anarchic, uncompromising improvisations to an impromptu public at 19 kilometers per hour. A champion of egalitarian performance, Limpe quit the group in the ‘80s when new experimental theatre work demanded agreement with more members and she felt that her voice was being compromised. Ever since she has devoted herself to “making music while listening to the streaming of time…with simplicity and emotion”, following the influence of soundscape artists. Whether improvising solo or with other players, Limpe unfailingly coaxes an otherworldly atmosphere from the sounds and silence of her surroundings with a childlike wonder, always open to surprise.
Presented in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut.
