Manifesta purposely strives to keep its distance from what are often seen as the dominant centres of artistic production, instead seeking fresh and fertile terrain for the mapping of a new cultural topography.
William Engelen, NL
Variation on Godspeed in 4/4 Time. 144 metal tubes 1400 × 150 × 400 cm.
William Engelen is a visual artist and composer. His work traverses visual arts and music, finding strategies from each field to test the boundaries between image and sound. The output includes installations, performances, videos and musical scores. His compositions are written by responding, often visually, to a given space or context – a museum, a church, a city park, a chocolate brand, or the daily activities of musicians – and then finding a method of acoustic translation. For every composition he develops a unique notation system. As performances, they are a collaborative negotiations set up by the artist. Depending on these variables, some works can be exactly reproduced, while others are interpreted anew each time they are played.