Rebecca Horn- Concert for Anarchy

The wild flowers are in full bloom in the desert and today is a birthday of Rebecca Horn and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Rebecca Horn, Body, Art installations

“Her discourse is charged with emotional tension but the representation is cool and calculated. Even the apparent contradiction between form and content helps to keep up the concentration her work demands. The most impressive piece in the Octagon room is Concert for Anarchy. A grand piano hanging upside down from the ceiling follows the pattern of the other sculptures: suddenly the keyboard cover opens and with spasmodic violence spills out the keys. After a few minutes it retracts back into itself with an extraneous release of energy, the absurdity and the violence of the piece creating a sense of uncertainty and a simple question: What is next?…”

More images are here.

Her early works – Berlin Exercises in nine pieces are here.

  • Concert for AnarchyConcert for Anarchy

  • Artaud’s Train is here.

    (Underwear, Unicorn body suit – previous post)

  • Rebecca Horn, Body, Art installations

  • <> <>
    Dreaming Stones – Rebecca Horn.

  • Rebecca Horn was born March 24, 1944, in Michelstadt, Germany. As a young girl, Horn read Johann Valentin Andreae’s Die chymische Hochzeit des Christian Rosenkreutz and Raymond Roussel’s Locus Solus, which cultivated the artist’s interest in alchemy, Surrealist machines, and the absurd. Studying at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg from 1964 to 1970, Horn was inspired by the writings of Franz Kafka and Jean Genet and the films of Luis Buñuel and Pier Paolo Pasolini. The most profound influence on Horn’s development as an artist, however, was a lung condition contracted in 1968 that forced her to stop using certain sculptural materials. A subsequent period of convalescence at a sanatorium inspired a series of sculptures concerned with the body, isolation, and vulnerability. Horn turned to soft materials, reminiscent of bandages and prostheses, and began making her body-extension sculptures.
    (Excerpts from here.)

    Rebecca Horn is Aires Monkey, the crafty chatterbox.

    Rebecca’s Sun and Moon are in Aries (the same as Marlon Brando and June Chang).
    The combination of your Sun sign and your Moon sign produces in you a truly explosive personality; dynamic, hard hitting, powerful, and magnetic. Independence and self-confidence may be so intensified that they become a stumbling block in personal relationships, if they are not somewhat tamed. You are an individualist first, last, and always. You are extremely impatient with people, sometimes to the extent of being intolerant. People may view you as hardboiled because of a tendency for you to be too matter-of-fact. You do express yourself readily and forcefully, with considerable dramatic effect. It’s painfully difficult for you to listen to and understand the woes of others. Your mind is always active: reading, talking, discussing. When it comes to getting things done and done rapidly, your talents can fill the bill (from here.)

    <> <> <> Untitled

    Buster’s Bedroom – just found out about this film today..

    Director: Rebecca Horn
    Starring: Donald Sutherland, Geraldine Chaplin, Amanda Ooms and Valentina Cortese
    Release: 1992
    Origin: Canada
    Genre: International, Drama
    Duration: 103 min.
    Language: English
    Price: $25.00

    A film student fascinated by Buster Keaton decides to visit Nirvana House, a sanatorium in the California desert where the actor stayed after the end of the silent film era. In charge is Dr. O’Connor (Donald Sutherland), an eccentric who experiments with venom and believes that great strength can be derived from complete inertia. The clinic’s oddball patients include an alcoholic former stuntwoman, an ex-pianist who believes that his ideal of silent music can be achieved by destroying his grand pianos, a former actress who collects her former lovers’ “souls” in the form of butterflies, and a man who thinks he’s a bee and goes around collecting nectar. Everyone soon comes to realize that the meaning of life resides in change, the source of true freedom.