Concerto Locale

Hannah Weinberger’s work is based on participation and collaboration and is the result of a collective participation that involves the local art community. At the Milan branch of the Swiss Institute of Rome, Weinberger presents a performance and an installation entitled Concerto Locale. It is a new version of a performance from 2012 entitled Regionales Konzert, presented in Basel on the occasion of Regionale: The Village Cry, the annual exhibition dedicated to local artists and hosted by all the Swiss institutions. On that occasion, the performance consisted of a group of performers playing their laptops. The music produced by the computers with the assistance of specific programs, without following a specific score, was then transmitted by a single channel in the gallery. Thanks to the involvement of personal contacts, especially of artists with whom Weinberger had shared personal and professional experiences, the work became the cue to question once again the concept of group and collaboration.

In the same way, the performance in Milan is based on participation and aggregation and aspires to create a local network starting from a common and shared practice. Concerto locale envisages the participation on 28 May (at 6.00 p.m.) of forty non-professional performers, contacted through the network of the Bureau for Art Nerds, via word-of-mouth and a relationship, even if temporary, that shares a common project. Each participant has at his/her disposal a portable computer, specific software and a speaker. During the performance, that is open to the public, they will have to follow Weinberger’s instructions and participate in the composition of music played in unison. Each performer will have the possibility to concentrate on his/her own piece thanks to the individual speaker, but at the same time will create a concert, if by the term concert not only a group united for the execution of a piece of music is intended, but an action carried out contemporaneously by several subjects, who in their turn are part of a local community. The day after the performance, 29 May (at 6.00 p.m.) there will be a sound installation presenting the results of the performance, broadcasted in loop via 40 audio channels.

The practices of aggregation, participation and comparison in the context of performances, openings or extemporaneous art events are recurring elements in Weinberger’s work. Her sound performances, musical compositions and audio installations are always the opportunity of encounter and shared participation: conceived as superimpositions and additions to apparently closed systems, like in the case of the interventions within group exhibitions, are often the starting point for a co-production or a simple opening towards participated practices. A process that favors a significant shift from an authorial and self-referential attitude to an identification in the work of a group or a collective of artists, annulling pre-established hierarchies and procedures.