ASSEMBLY: Christian Marclay

Pedestrians, traffic, roadworks, protest, the corner of Somerset House where Waterloo Bridge meets Embankment is a hive of often unpredictable activity and noise. Acknowledging and working with this to define a compositional framework, Marclay invites a series of guests to collaborate in bringing the outdoor inside for an evolving series of electro-acoustic performances. Presented over three nights, six new performances corresponding to Marclay’s sonic vision will be created live in the space, each responding to the concept in a different way.

On Friday 08 November resident artist and musician Beatrice Dillon presents infraordinary, a new work examining and reframing the rhythmic patterns of the street outside, alongside new audio-visual work by Haroon Mirza utilising projected visuals and panning to re-spatialise the traffic soundscape.

Saturday 09 November sees Lawrence Lek team up with Seth Scott & Robin Simpson to replicate the atmosphere of the Extinction Rebellion protests that took place on Waterloo Bridge which the Lancaster Rooms overlook. Mira Benjamin, John Lely & Heather Roche join collaboratively on Room Song, a performance which is founded on the interplay of instrumental intonation and environmental acoustics to create an interior 'resonancing' of the outside world.

On Sunday 10 November, experimental techno producer Karen Gwyer will approach the street noises as drums building over the course of the performance, while John Butcher and Lasse Marhaug join forces to modulate the street sounds through saxophone and electronics, creating a complex multi-ingredient feedback system to be manipulated in real time.

Christian Marclay’s ambitious and accomplished practice explores the juxtaposition between sound, photography, video and sculpture. His installations display provocative musical and visual landscapes and have been included in exhibitions around the world including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Venice Biennale, Centre Pompidou Paris and Kunsthaus Zurich. More recently, he exhibited The Clock at the Tate Modern (debuted at White Cube in 2010), the artwork was created from thousands of edited fragments, from a vast range of films to create a 24-hour, single-channel video.

Please note this is an 18+ event.

Production by Music Hackspace and sound system by Call & Response, with sound and interaction programming from Black Shuck and Preverbal Studio. Lighting design by KitMapper.

ASSEMBLY is supported by the Adonyeva Foundation, PRS Foundation's The Open Fund and John S Cohen Trust