Annika Kahrs

Blandine Soulage

Venue

Usines Fagor

Lyon

Born 1984 in Achim, Germany.
Lives and works in Hamburg and Berlin, Germany.

In her videos, Annika Kahrs explores perceptions of music and disrupts the parameters of how it is presented, interpreted and received, to foster spontaneity rather than virtuosity. For Le chant des maisons, the artist extended an invitation to amateur and professional singers, and to carpenters. Their voices and the sounds of their tools, respectively, converse in the abandonned Saint-Bernard church constructed on the Croix-Rousse hill at the request of the canuts (silk workers in Lyon). During the performance, the carpenters build a wooden structure resembling a house inside the church, while the musicians react to and with them. A visual and sonic mixture of tense and loose moments, choreographed and coincidental encounters, as well as melodies, drone sounds from organ pipes, voices, hammers and screwdrivers within the majestic reverb of this space materializes on screen.