Not everything can be explained or looked at from what we might consider to be a normal perspective. Right now, I want to share with you a mind-warping experience that I went through, that left me almost without words. I combined two things that are so otherworldly, it took me putting them together to make sense of them. This is what happened: I watched the Hermann Nitsch’s videos that he created in 1982 of one of his performances that totally had my mind racing with all sorts of thoughts about his work. Then I put on William Fowler Collins‘ album The Resurrections Unseen, which became the perfect soundtrack for what I was watching. The Hermann Nitsch videos are broken into 6 parts, so with each one I played a different song from The Resurrections Unseen. It was interesting to hear the tension and drama in William Fowler Collins’ compositions while watching something parallel play out in Hermann’s work. As an artist, I feel that they both would like the listener or viewer to make up their own mind about their art. I find it impossible to label what I feel when I hear “Embracing Our Own Annhilation” from The Resurrections Unseen, or where my imagination went as I saw the flowing blood in Hermann’s videos. As art, both of these works can stand alone no doubt, but together, a new vortex could open up in your brain. Below you will find Part 1 of Hermann Nitsch, plus a full stream of the William Fowler Collins album out now on Type Records. After the jump, you will find the five remaining videos…this will be intense, but what else would you want it to be?
More Hermann Nitsch flims after the jump!
Jelle
June 8, 2012 at 2:22 am
I saw an action of him in Tilburg at the Incubate festival in 2009: super intense but strangely enough also kind of calming. Took three hours in total, you can see some pics of it here (including animal rights activists protesting): http://www.flickr.com/photos/incubatetilburg/sets/72157624707054075/with/3942770818/