Review & Outlook
The musicians Barbara Romen and Gunter Schneider learned about Michael W. Schneider’s technique of preparing printing plates by the use of bifaces during a stay in the United States.
Michael W. Schneider was kneeling on the floor, working a plate with
a stone that he had found, hitting the wooden board in regular and irregular progression. The character of the stone, the power of impact, the depth of impact, the density in combination with the changing quality of the wood weave into structures. The so created relief is then inked with Indian ink and printed in Japanese technique.
What begun as a project that primarily used the rhythmic percussive aspect of the process developed into a series of joint performances titled klopfzeichen (tap codes) exploring fundamental connections between visual art/printmaking and music.
Focus is placed on the relation between temporal and spatial gestaltung, synchronicity, differences and similarities between the disciplines and not least the understanding of the created prints as notation and record of music and at the same time the manifestation of the aetheric nature of the process of creating work of visual art within sounds. The alleged clear classification of visual and acoustical art as disciplines of hearing and seeing increasingly become questionable and dissolve. The visual artist makes himself heard, music becomes visible. The experimental aspect of the preparation of the plates as well as the creation of sound and music (the preparation of the instruments, unusual use of instruments) add to the archaic character of this undertaking that is crossing the boundaries of disciplines.
The Japanese origin of the print technique of Michael W. Schneider
has led to the expansion of our work then titled klopfzeichen & klangschnitte (tap codes & sound cuts) by introducing Japanese
printmakers (Miida Seiichiro, Isomi Teruo, Segawa Maiko,
Raita Miadera) and musicians/composers (Yasuhara Masayuki,
Unami Taku).
The close connection between Western and Japanese music and art in the 20th century is the basis and precondition for a redefinition of the relationship and the correlation. The paradigm change from Printmaking to Printmedia has shown itself in the increasing importance of the performative aspect of printed art. Since its start in 2005 this performative practice has become an influential avantgarde.
The encounter with the Austrian writers Rosa Pock and Peter Ahorner in 2009 resulted in the incorporation of yet another level of expression and reflexion, phoneme and speech improvisation.
Again the different fields comment and enrich each other anew.
The literary field of expression with its dynamic gets in connection with the dramaturgy and the course of visual activity and music. The semantic aspect creates new options for associations and connections. Seemingly self-evident correlations are questioned and redefined. The area of sound connects all three disciplines, out of these different functions it becomes music in its own right, carrier of textual information and noise of the working process. Printing plate and print become an image, effigy and documentation of the action. The phoneme and speech improvisations (sprachsplitter / splints of speech) open up space that reaches from the sound and word to speech and narration to the discourse over the act itself.
It is said that the goal of a Japanese conversation is not so much to agree about facts and opinions but to create a fundamental concordance through the communicative process by a net of corresponding vibrations.
Not unambiguousness but joint openness is the goal.
© Barbara Romen, Gunter Schneider, Michael W. Schneider