ART-PRESENTATION: Nicholas Bussmann-Amelica

Nicholas Bussmann is a composer, performer and sound artist. He mixes traditional composition with club music production techniques and conceptual art. He performs under various monikers and band names. The broad facettes of his work are shown in pieces such as the Video “Etüde in bürgerlichen Gefühlen” 2009, the opera ‘Barnes Dance for 7 singers, 4 drummers’, 2010; as well as the 2012, House Music album “Nicholas Desamory–like you”.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: TAXISPALAIS Kunsthalle Tirol Archive

In Nicholas Bussmann’s first solo exhibition entitled “Amelica”, two videos block the way into the lobby. They show a conductor training a colleague: embodied gestures of action and spectatorship and their mutual transmission from one person to another (“Video No. 2”, (2007)). The entrance to the exhibition has been diverted and leads in two different directions now: in “Wandering Dunes” (2018) a playground with sandboxes, props and the blinding instruction to build a world and its anagrammatic variations, the other  leads to “Amelica” (2018), an abandoned dance hall in which the “best house riffs for piano” pervade the misty air like ghosts. In the video entitled “Etüde in bürgerlichen Gefühlen” (2009), Nicholas Bussmann works his way through moods, through tuning and through modulations of his own voice. In “A language is a dialect with an army” (2017), a Wikipedia entry about dialects is read by a computer-generated voice for blind people in a YouTube clip. The spoken words are automatically transcribed for the deaf in turn. We see a filmed documentation of that process. Also in “Revolution Songs in an AI Environment” (2017) an automated piano plays revolution songs without hands or voices. The lyrics shine bright on karaoke LEDs. Nicholas Bussmann plays with the Here and Now. Every moment is permeated by antecedent figures. Inevitably, the joyful question arises of whether it is possible to shape and form these figurations in the present. In Nicholas Bussmann’s first solo exhibition we encounter mimetic adoptions in music, installations, videos and sandbox games. Clearly marked territories’ frames of reference are infringed upon. Reconfiguration, swan song and party accord in an improvised alliance.

Info: Curator: Nina Tabassomi, TAXISPALAIS Kunsthalle Tirol, Maria-Theresien-Str. 45, Innsbruck, Duration 1/7-16/9/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sun 11:00-18:00, Thu 11:00-20:00, https://taxispalais.art