HEAVY COLOR

Vanquish the Void | 2022 | Haseeb Ahmed

From the FRONT website :

Haseeb Ahmed’s site-specific installation Vanquish the Void! (2022) transforms the winds of Lake Erie into a staged weather system in The Lab at SPACES. Ahmed records the winds of Cleveland using a dedicated weather station visible through the gallery window. Inside, these winds are played back in a dramatized form with custom-made automated aeoliphones, traditionally crank-driven machines used since the seventeenth century to create gentle breezes and chaotic storms for opera, theater, and cinema. The gallery becomes a space to stage the winds and all their cultural associations. Oriented toward downtown, the installation addresses the city as its audience.

An eight-part score made in collaboration with musicians Heavy Color duets with these staged winds. The score is a six-channel composition for a small woodwind ensemble performed by multi-instrumentalist Patrick Booth that incorporates a collection of accounts of the winds of Cleveland by its residents. In a final movement, the score and the aeoliphones’ winds serve as the soundtrack for a film made in real time in the gallery. Programmed by Pieter Heremans, the film’s visuals are made with practical effects: a model on a suspended turntable rotates in sync with the score through eight different stages of a storm and scales of the city that the winds affect. The model’s vortical shape serves as the “eye of the storm.”

PRESS LINKS : Frieze Magazine | Ocula | FRONT

Vanquish the Void is the third of four planned collaborations between Heavy Color and Haseeb Ahmed.