LAND-IN-SCAPE
Site-specific musical-visual work
Val Poschiavo – Sant’Abbondio on Lago Maggiore
Since 2020
One characteristic of traditional Chinese landscape painting Shān Shuǐ; (mountain-water) is that it never merely depicts a landscape, but always encompasses a reflection of one's own position and one’s relationship to the world. The gaze wanders into the distance and is simultaneously directed inwards.
Inspired by this stance, Hug worked for several weeks in the high mountain valley of Val Poschiavo and in Sant'Abbondio on Lago Maggiore. Mountain & water are also formative in this artistic experiment. In contrast to Chinese tradition, Hug explores the landscape primarily through the sense of hearing. She listens and communicates with the landscape by singing. The sounds scan the surfaces of the topographic features and respond with subtle multiple echoes. Using frottage technique, the surfaces of the high mountain trail appear on the paper, with the sharp edges of graphite stones or gnarled curves of roots. The artist pours water over the ink traces drying in the sun on Lago Maggiore. The landscape shapes the sound and the structures on the paper.
«Resonance is not a feeling, but a form of relationship» is a core concept by the sociologist Hartmut Rosa The pictorial support of the Son-Icon is a semi-transparent sheet. Both sides are used. One side explores the acoustic exterior space, the other the interior space. The first resonating space for vocal sound is our mouth. It is soft and hard at the same time, clearly formed and yet extremely malleable. Richly varied, sometimes dramatic formations of the oral cavity with strokes of the tongue, air currents and eddies during sound production are visualised by Son-Icons (visual music) drawn with graphite and red chalk.
Sounds of the inside and outside listen to each other and speak in their own voices. By using both sides of the semi-transparent film for the drawings, the inner and outer worlds also enter into a visual relationship. Sounds, moved and shaped by inner and outer landscapes, invite the audience into multiple frames of reference and resonating spaces.
Solo exhibition Resonances at the Gallery da Mihi, May - June 2021
Land-In-Scape, spatial installation and solo performance at Casa Hasler in Poschiavo in July 2020.
Thanks to the "Artist in Residence Programme of Uncool la Ciaf, Visarte and the Foundation Bick.
