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Music icon Meredith Monk in the 700-year-old ‘Oude Kerk’ Amsterdam

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Meredith Monk: Calling

Already for 5 decades Meredith Monk is pushing the boundaries of of vocal music with her highly unique approach to the exploration of the human voice. The 700-year-old Oude Kerk in Amsterdam inspired Meredith Monk to create a multi-dimensional journey that blurs the lines between visual art, music and performance. 

Music icon Meredith Monk in the 700-year-old ‘Oude Kerk’ Amsterdam

An iconic retrospective

Meredith Monk is a true music legend, having dedicated her entire career to exploring the possibilities of the voice and the expressiveness of that human instrument. Knowing Meredith Monk mainly through her sound singing, often described as ancient and contemporary at the same time, the theatre performances and films were a big unknown. You think you know Monk’s art, realising not to know. When you enter the exhibition it is not difficult to see that her work with voice, music, staged performances, and film found a natural home in the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam’s oldest building and nowadays a venue for contemporary art too. What makes the exhibition interesting as well is the fact that Meredith looks back on almost 6 decades of work. She takes us on a tour along the century old walls via immersive video and sound installations and smaller archive presentations of scores, drawings and objects. Monk transforms the church space into a singing body that immerses the visitor in a fascinating audio-visual adventure.

Archaeology of perceptions

In interviews, Meredith Monk said: “I work between the cracks, where the voice starts dancing, where the body starts singing, where theatre becomes cinema.” In doing so, she stretches what you can do and where you can go. Monk creates works that deal with an intersection of music and movement, image and object, light and sound. Interdisciplinary works that encourage the healing power of art. That allows you to discover and build new ways of perception. In this 700-year church, Monk plays with the idea of the church as a body of archived stories. Yet seen from a humanistic perspective on the world. We are all very different, but still all human. There is a curiosity about what we leave behind in our world and what stories the objects tell. Meredith also stands up for nature. One of her pieces is called On behalf of Nature. In it, she tells us that the smallest particle always connects with the largest: the macrocosm. In the Oude Kerk, the contrast of the ancient and contemporary, aided by the beautiful filtered light, imparts a great sense of beauty. It all contributes to an allure we were unprepared for.

Music icon Meredith Monk in the 700-year-old ‘Oude Kerk’ Amsterdam
Music icon Meredith Monk in the 700-year-old ‘Oude Kerk’ Amsterdam

Monumental & intimate

Three of Meredith Monk’s pioneering key performance/multimedia installations are included in Calling. Monk’s groundbreaking 16 Millimeter Earrings, is a seamless integration of live performance, film, vocal and instrumental music, movement, objects, text, recorded sound and light. 16 mm explores different ways to manipulate individual images. Still very actual is Quarry revolving around the musings of an American child who lies sick in bed during WWII having a dream that gradually turns into a nightmare. An old radio in the middle of the room emits Monk’s voice, piano solos and fragments from fictional news broadcasts. The child’s illness is a metaphor for the darkness of the world at war. Juice is a theatre cantata in three instalments. It is considered one of Monk’s most important location-based musical theatre performances. After establishing her interdisciplinary company, The House, in 1968, Monk expanded this concept to large groups of local artists performing in monumental architectural spaces, such as the Guggenheim Museum. Monk goal for every location was to find another relationship between the audience and the artists. 

Rooms for looking & listening

Two listening and viewing rooms next to the entrance show the archive of Monk’s broad and diverse oeuvre. They also display the underlying central theme of Monk’s work: the cycles present in all processes, such as the relationship between humans and nature, the planetary world and the spiritual. Monk often gets inspiration from examining the way cells in the body and nature function. According to Monk, a process in which cooperation is more important than competition, altruism is more essential than selfishness, and mutual solidarity overcomes division. The Mirror Room contains recordings of live musical theatre and concert works. In the Kerkmeesterskamer you can listen to unpublished works material, fragments of interviews, documentaries and short films. 

Website Meridith Monk: Calling, Oude Kerk 

Oude Kerk, Oudekerksplein 23 1012 GX Amsterdam
E info@oudekerk.nl

Music icon Meredith Monk in the 700-year-old ‘Oude Kerk’ Amsterdam
Featured-traveljus-light-of-venice

The irresistible appeal of Venice’s unique light and architecture

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The interplay between Venice’s light and architecture creates a magical experience

 

The irresistible appeal of Venice’s unique light and architecture

One of the main attractions of Venice is light

The cause of my love affair with Venice is that strange, fabulous light. Each moment of the day new effects arise that generate some astonishing illuminations. The endlessly changing beauty of light on the water an its reflections on houses, churches and palaces is part of an interplay that exploits alluring optical effects but is also profoundly mystical. It is when art perfectly complements urban nature. Added by the fact that Venice has remained virtually unchanged for centuries. This urban environment is full of architectural styles and details seen nowhere else in Italy or the world. Even with this kind of visual appeal, let’s not forget that the Doge’s city is a real city, despite the many visitors enjoying the canals, gondolas and cooing pigeons on San Marco Square. It is a tangle of stones and water where normal residents pursue their business like anywhere else in the world.

The rhythm of the lagoon

Most cities are in a constant state of decay and transformation, demolition and rebuilding, but not Venice. In Venice, it seems that familiarity and memory dominate. Venetians hold their past cultural stories tight to themselves. No matter how big the crowds are at the Rialto Bridge, the residents think the city in the lagoon should be theirs. It is a veritable sentiment representative of the loss of a traditional, communal way of life in the face of tourism. The signs of daily life in the lagoon city are slowly draining away. It is no secret that the population of Venice is in steady decline. The number dropped last year below 50,000 for the first time in over 300 years. Residents complain about the lack of affordable housing, the high cost of living in a tourist-driven city, and the loss of businesses that sell essential items. Residents do not want Venice to become unhomely, to lose what was once familiar, safe, and stable. Venice wants to keep on writing her own story according to the rhythm of the lagoon.

The irresistible appeal of Venice’s unique light and architecture
The irresistible appeal of Venice’s unique light and architecture

Venice is the city of mirages

The cause of our love affair with Venice is that strange, fabulous light. Each moment of the day new effects arise that generate some astonishing illuminations. The endlessly changing beauty of light on the water an its reflections on houses, churches and palaces is part of an interplay that exploits alluring optical effects but is also profoundly mystical. It is when art perfectly complements urban nature. Added by the fact that Venice has remained virtually unchanged for centuries. This urban environment is full of architectural styles and details seen nowhere else in Italy or the world. Even with this kind of visual appeal, let’s not forget that the Doge’s city is a real city, despite the many visitors enjoying the canals, gondolas and cooing pigeons on San Marco Square. It is a tangle of stones and water where normal residents pursue their business like anywhere else in the world.

Tangible reality

There are more reasons to love Venice than the tangible reality of its light. Meeting friends, and locals who live there, to spend time together, laughing, eating and drinking, diminishes the influence of the tourist cliché of bell towers, arched bridges and gondolas. Though many have been seduced by its art, architecture, poetry and beauty, Venice is more than half a tourist trap and half a fairy tale or a library of our collective memory. It invites us to walk. There you are, exploring. Only then you will realise that in this urban labyrinth, water and architecture can be a hundred things at the same time. The truth is that everywhere you go, you will find the endlessly changing beauty of Venetian light. A light that is concrete and tangible through the senses. As a suggestion, read also our article about the unbuilt Venetian hospital project of the famous French architect Le Corbusier. Le Corbusier too recognised that there is no place on earth with such light. But be aware, in Venice nothing is ever quite certain. Enjoy the journey!

The irresistible appeal of Venice’s unique light and architecture
Le-Corbusier---Venice-hospital-project

What remains of Le Corbusier’s fascinating hospital project in Venice?

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Le Corbusier Venice Hospital project

Venice missed a huge opportunity in the 1960s to include contemporary architecture in its city shape. At the time, the French modernist architect Le Corbusier was invited to build an open-form hospital on three levels in San Giobbe. The idea was to extend the hospital site into the lagoon by building on stilts. Sadly, any hope to see the project completed faded in August 1965, when Le Corbusier died of a heart attack.

What remains of Le Corbusier’s fascinating hospital project in Venice?

A love affair with Venice

I have affection or respect for other cities, but with Venice, it is more: I treasure the architecture of this floating city. Fenced in by the rippling water of the lagoon, Venice has many admirers, including some you would not expect. None other than Swiss-French architect Charles Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, known as Le Corbusier, fell in love with Venice since his first visit in October 1907. Over time, the figurehead of modernism and a critic of many urban developments travelled again and again to the lagoon. Le Corbusier loved the human proportions of the Venetian alleys, the small arteries of the city. For the site in San Giubbe, Le Corbusier’s design strategy is an attempt not to eradicate history, but to translate it into the future, to shape it into something new. Le Corbusier seems to be someone who can transform the events of his own history or knowledge in architectural designs. It take a genius to fit a modernist building into a centuries old urban environment. 

Research of urban proportions

Talk about a new hospital in San Giobbe started in 1959. In 1962, Mayor Giovanni Favaretto Fisca contacted Le Corbusier and asked him to be the architect in charge of the project. After some heated public debates, Venice decided on April 20, 1963, to announce a competition for Italian architects and engineers to submit proposals for the hospital project. With no clear winner of the competition, the hot potato arrived again on Le Corbusier’s plate. Le Corbusier moved to Venice for a first survey of the Venetian urban fabric in August 1963 . He calculates the proportions of Venetian streets and squares. The architecture of Venice is clearly horizontal, and the average building height 13.66 metres. There are only a few vertical exceptions, such as the tower of San Marco. Venice is a small city of only 8 km2, comparable to the historic city centre of Amsterdam. Like Amsterdam, buildings lay down on water, held up by stilts. The idea of a building on stilts extending over water, may originate from Le Corbusier’s interest in prehistoric lake dwellings in central Europe. 

What remains of Le Corbusier’s fascinating hospital project in Venice?
What remains of Le Corbusier’s fascinating hospital project in Venice?

A horizontal hospital

Based on his research Le Corbusier concluded it was best not to alter the urban city shape, but rather extend it on stilts within the lagoon landscape. The Venice Hospital should not be built vertically, but built as a ‘horizontal hospital.’ In November 1964, a first draft arrived in Venice accompanied by a letter: “A hospital is the house of man. The key is the man, his height, his step, his eye, his hand. That is why the starting point will be his accommodation, the hospital room”. Three main levels were planned. The ground level with general services makes a connection with the city. On this level it is all public access. The second level is for medical care and technology. And the third level serves as the zone for hospitalization, plus a visitor area. The number 4 is leading. 4 rooms are placed side by side to form a so-called “care unit”. 4 care units are grouped together and are served by 4 “calli” or alleys. The route along the alleys, where patients can meet and relax, is organized in a similar way as the alleys of Venice. 

Venice, a unique phenomenon

One of the most interesting contributions Le Corbusier made is his reflection on the position of the patient. Forced into his bed, the patient cannot enjoy a view of Venice. In Venice there is this thing called the “transenna”. It is the way buildings, water and light merge into a completely different image. Le Corbusier designed a system of ceilings and windows that capture these variations of natural light in the lagoon. Like this the patient can feel the “transenna” of Venice. Le Corbusier’s hope to see the Venice project completed vanished in August 1965 when he died of a heart attack, 87 years old, swimming below the cliffs at Eileen Grey’s house in Cap Martin, France.

Venice is a totality. It is a unique phenomenon” wrote Le Corbusier once. He saw Venice as a fluid city of human proportion, a city “of total harmony, integral purity and unity of civilization. In its most hidden corners and you will realize that in this urban enterprise one finds, everywhere, tenderness.” It is fitting, perhaps, that his final project was for Venice, the city he came to love so deeply.

What remains of Le Corbusier’s fascinating hospital project in Venice?

Le Corbusier unbuilt hospital project in Venice

 

See also our article about the light and architecture of Venice

Kato-Zakros-Archaeological-site

Archaeological sites are theatres of another time – Minoan Kato Zakros

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Exploring the silence of  stones

Almost at the far edge of eastern Crete, in a barren, mostly unspoilt landscape, you’ll find the Minoan Palace of Kato Zakros close to the shores of the Libyan Sea. The Minoan palace of Kato Zakros fascinates once you start imagining its past. Its existence is an act open to possibilities. The palace had about 300 rooms arranged around a central courtyard and covered an area of about 8,000 square meters. It is the fourth largest Minoan palace complex on Crete. Exploring the site you are bound to pick something up from its silent stones. 

Archaeological sites are theatres of another time – Minoan Kato Zakros

Historical footprint

The palace of Kato Zakros may not be as imposing or widespread as the more well-known palaces of Phaistos or Knossos, but its historical footprint is revelatory. From its establishment around 1900 BC until 1450 B.C. the palace of Kato Zakros was the religious, administrative, and economic centre of eastern Crete. Evidence of trade with the East were found in a storeroom in the West Wing consisting of four elephant tusks and six bronze talents. Since the Zakros Palace operated as a commercial outlet from and to the East, the palace also had access to a port through its main gate at the northeastern side.

An often overlooked trade exchange with the East was cultural. Sovereigns from Canaan and Egypt for example would hire Minoan artists to paint stylish Minoan frescoes on their palace walls. Excavations at the site of Tell el-Dabʿ in the Nile Delta region of Egypt revealed high-quality wall paintings executed in Minoan technique and style. In these palaces, dating back to the Thuthmoside period, the walls were covered with  Minoan court emblems and motifs, such as bull-leaping and wrestling scenes, such as seen mainly in Knossos. 

Zakros and Knossos

One of the historical enigmas of Zakros is its status in relationship to Knossos. At the time Eastern Crete was an area of strategic importance and kept an extensive trade network with the Near and Middle East. One theory assumes that Zakros, because it lacked sufficient agricultural land to sell or exchange produce, made its living from importing luxury items for Knossos. There is likewise the presumed theory that Zakros was one of the major naval bases of the Minoan fleet in Crete. And what does this say about the political structure of Minoan Crete? Was Zakros governed independently or as part of an autonomous region controlled by the monarch of Knossos?

Archaeological sites are theatres of another time – Minoan Kato Zakros

A considerable number of Minoan buildings and clay imprints

Kato Zakros was first excavated in 1901 by the British archaeologist and scholar D. Hogarth. The remains of a Minoan settlement came to the surface, indicating a flourishing and sophisticated civilisation. Hogarth found around 300 clay stamps. These clay imprints indicated an administrative system for the stock counting of (commercial) products. Some of these clay stamps dating back to 15th century B.C. originate from Knossos, another sign of a possible close relationship between Knossos and Zakros. When a typhoon hit the area in the summer of 1901 Hogarth was forced to abandon the excavation. He almost drowned, but managed to escaped by miracle.

Spectacular craftmanship

Sixty years later, in October 1961, the Ephore of Cretan Antiquities N. Platon started a new excavation in the valley of Kato Zakros. The Greek archeologist was convinced that Kato Zakros was much more than a harbour or a naval settlement. The 1960s excavations discovered a large palace complex with many typical Minoan architectural features. These include a large central court (30x12m), secondary courts, porticos, a monumental stepped entrance, one and two storey buildings, and storage rooms. Some rooms were embellished with frescos similar to those at Knossos, depicting bulls, spirals and double axes.

Archaeological sites are theatres of another time – Minoan Kato Zakros

Contrary to palaces of Knossos, Malia and Phaistos, the palace of Zakros was not looted. During millennia it was covered by earth and left untouched. The remote location surely helped. Artefacts of great aesthetic and artistic value were found, ceremonial pots and vessels, including the most beautiful stone vessel of the Cretan-Mycenaean era. One of the highlights as well is the small (16 cm) rhyton carved in rock crystal. A real masterpiece of craftsmanship and technical skill exhibited in the Heraklion Archaeological museum. The body is made of a single core of hard stone. The neck is attached to the body by a ring of crystal beads and gilded ivory discs. Nobody knows which techniques were used to carve it or how they made the handle of spherical crystal beads threaded onto a bronze wire.  To work the crystal you need a material that is harder than the crystal itself.

Archaeological sites are theatres of another time – Minoan Kato Zakros

The architecture of the palace of Kato Zakros

The architecture of the palaces of Knossos, Phaistos, Malia and Zakros in the first period around 2000-1900 B.C. seems to be based on an organic building structure. The natural environment, mostly the climatic and geological conditions,  dictated the construction more than geometric principles.

The palace was not only the king’s residence, but also the centre of religious, economic and political life. Living quarters, reception halls, sanctuaries, warehouses and workshops are all grouped around a central courtyard. Columns are a fundamental element of Minoan architecture. The living quarters are often located on the east side, sometimes spread over several floors, connected by stairs. On the west side are the warehouses and the religious spaces. From the terraces with overhanging gardens, colonnades and loggias, one looks out over the landscape.

Similar to many other Minoan buildings on Crete, the Zakros palace and the town were suddenly destroyed around 1450 BC, marking the end of the Neopalatial period.