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Resonance Project: The Cave, 17th Lyon Biennale

Resonance Project: The Cave, 2024

Premiere of a new 8-screen immersive video opera and sound installation at the 17th Lyon Biennale 
Opening ceremony on 20 Sept 2024
From 21 Sept 2024 to 5 Jan 2025 | Lyon Biennale 2024, Grandes Locos, Lyon, France

12 Rue Gabriel Péri, 69350 La Mulatière 
Tue — Fri 11am to 6pm / Sat - Sun 10am to 7pm

 

Oliver Beer has been granted rare access to the renowned Paleolithic painted caves of Dordogne, La Grotte de Font-de-Gaume, which house some of humanity’s earliest artworks. During his exploration, he uncovered a fascinating relationship between the cave paintings and the acoustic resonance of the space. Realizing that it was impossible to bring the public into the caves to experience this phenomenon firsthand, Beer devised an innovative solution: to bring the cave to the viewer.

For the Lyon Biennale, Beer will transform the cave's unique acoustic properties into an immersive 8-screen video and 16-channel sound installation. This installation features a new composition by Beer and an octet of singers, including Rufus Wainwright, Woodkid, eee gee, Mélissa Laveaux, Hamed Sinno, Jean Christophe Brizard, Mo'Ju and Michiko Takahashi.

Resonance Project: The Cave is the latest and most ambitious work in Oliver Beer's ongoing Resonance Project, a series of works that explore the relationship between music, the human body, and space. In The Cave, Beer collaborated with eight singers from diverse musical backgrounds. He taught them to use their voices to stimulate the resonance frequencies of the famous painted cave – specific notes that cause it to sing back to them with its own powerful voice, creating a surreal and almost supernatural sound that fills the cave and eclipses the voice of the singer.

The installation immerses the viewer in the acoustic environment of the cave while also exploring the musical memories of each singer in Beer’s polyphonic composition. Through the spine-tingling and immutable experience of acoustic resonance in the cave, and its intrinsic relationship to the artworks created there, it celebrates our shared musical heritage.

The paintings in the series Resonance Paintings were produced by letting the vibrations of the singers' voices move pigments about on the canvases. They reveal the invisible abstract forms that fill the air of the cave when it is activated by singing.


Co-production: Oliver Beer and Anna Lena Films / Florence Cohen. 
With the support of Mondes Nouveaux, Ministère de la Culture, Centre des monuments nationaux, Fondation des Artistes, French Embassy in Australia, Thaddaeus Ropac gallery and Almine Rech.

Download the press review here

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