Public Parks is an audiovisual performance and sound installation of urban landscapes
Premiere
26. bis 29. August 2021 : Galerie Vito von Gaudlitz, Dresden
06 bis 17. September 2021 : Galerie PublicArtists, Wien
Everywhere asphalt covers the earth, the longing for green arises.
With the onset of industrialization, more and more people moved into the cities. Parks that had previously been reserved for the aristocracy were made accessible to the public, and new spaces were created. For a good hundred years, urban planners and architects have been looking for creative ways to design and play with public space.
This area of tension between urban and green space is explored by bassist and composer Kurt Holzkämper and tap dancer and photographer Thomas Marek in their new project "Public Parks."
Five well-known parks - the Schlossgarten in Stuttgart, Planten un Blomen in Hamburg, Tempelhof in Berlin, the Prater in Vienna and the Schlosspark in Eisenstadt - are being visualized, rendered musical, intensified and distorted in an interplay of music, dance and photography. The result is five abstract portraits of urban landscapes. These portraits will be shown in an audiovisual installation in an art gallery. They consist of musical compositions played in Dolby Surround, video projections, fine art photo prints and live performances with tap and double bass.
In these performances, the parks themselves become instruments: underpasses, park benches or trash cans, and even plants are transformed into novel sound sources with the help of electronic sensors and tap sounds. Depending on the listening and viewing angle, the compositions change - spectators moving around the space or sitting on a bench in the middle of the room immerse themselves in an artistic abstraction of urban-green worlds with the audiovisual sound installations.
The artists
Kurt Holzkämper
Kurt Holzkämper is a versatile musician who travels between worlds. He explores on bass, electronics and with his compositions the convergences and boundaries to art forms like modern dance, tapdance, acting, live illustration or sound installations. His artistic field of work is the abstract connection of movement and sound, conception and composition with sound textures, harmonies and melodies. Thus he is active in numerous international and interdisciplinary projects, such as the CampFestival Sofia with the light artist Laurenz Theinert, the Austrian tap dancer Thomas Marek or with the actress Suzanne von Borsody, a performance about Frida Kahlo.
At the Theaterhaus Stuttgart, he premiered a solo recital on bass together with the Iranian illustrator Mehrdad Zaeri in "die letzten schönen Tage".
For the Stuttgart Ballet he created an electro-acoustic hybrid version of "Kaash" based on a choreography by Kram Kahn / Nitini Sawhney.
He teaches jazz bass, electronic improvisation conception and instrumental didactics at the University of Music in Würzburg.
Thomas Marek
As a performer, choreographer and musician, Thomas Marek has been combining traditional and modern forms of tap dance with contemporary musical and theatrical elements in his work for over 25 years.
Deeply rooted in jazz, Marek experiments with the possibilities of sound design, phrasing, touch and tone. He explores the space in which tap dancing moves, he shifts boundaries and discovers new forms of expression that tie in with the origins of tap and draw on its cultural context - revealing new stories.
His interest in photography began in his early teens. With a used Nikon FG as a constant companion, photography quickly became a great passion and means of artistic expression. In the early 1990s, Thomas then began taking black and white portraits of fellow dancers, actors and artists and developing them in his darkroom.
In the early 2000s his photography turned into a second profession alongside his tap dancing and performing.