‘presence (Un) presence’,
Martijn Tellinga at Zone2Source, Glazen Huis 13- 20 December 2020

‘presence (Un) presence’ is a self-evolving environment for images, objects, performative actions. And sound. The piece follows Martijn Tellinga’s ongoing interest in the musicality of space and situation, and his current research to extend musical principles of process, collaboration and esthetics to negotiate the layered composition of installation work.

Throughout its unfolding 8-day event-structure, ‘presence (Un) presence’ slowly gains shape as a contingent spatio-visual dialogue between the emerging interactions of 7 participating musical interpreters testing the musicality of largely silent gestures, and a gradually building multichannel AV meditation on musical memory, anticipation and experience.

Utilising a score-based approach to installation, the work aims to transpose musical system, reading and delivery onto this speculative musical space, asking how musical forms can materialise through non-audible agencies, and how music compositional ideas as abstract objects can travel between different mediums and situations. Disconnected from the necessity of sound & listening, ‘presence (Un) presence’ invites the viewer to engage with the fundamental ideas of music composition and performance through this alternative setting.

The exhibition at Zone2Source / Glazen Huis is the first public presentation of this current, exploratory chapter of work of Martijn Tellinga, which distinguishes musicality and composition as process from music as a sounding result. The project is concerned with imagining an intermedia concept of musicality which is able to function as a generative compositional devise crossing material boundaries, and, ultimately, proposes the possibility for music to express and affect through transformable mediums and formats.

Martijn Tellinga is an artist, composer and occasional performer. His practice enfolds elements of concert, installation and performance art. Drawn from a reduced formalist-seeming vocabulary, his work centers on the exploration of modes of music to express ideas of space, place and process: their reciprocal production, contextual intertwining, and potential as a perceptual, performative and social medium. It includes a wide variety of conceptual actions and chance operations, probing the emergent field between intended and accidental occurrences.

He performs and exhibits his work worldwide, lectures and works in residence. He teaches projects at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing and ArtEZ Academy in Arnhem. With DNK-Amsterdam he is co-responsible for a long-running series of events, concerts and exhibitions.

www.martijntellinga.nl