Invoking the facially disfigured soldiers of the first world war, operatically trained experimental singer Diamanda Galás collaborated remotely with artist and sound engineer Daniel Neumann, and video artist Carlton Bright, on a quadrophonic sound work premiering tonight.
Galas created music, video script, video and photography, and expanded them with photography of disfigured men since World War I through German pacifist and anarchist Ernst Freidrich.
Broken Gargoyles, oS⅃ OS component, a series of 12 systems transmitted from an empty gallery, will be shown for the first time at 8 p.m. EDT in FridmanLive.com. This is a live performance.
The audiovisual installation is an in-process painting with a reading of excerpts from the poet Georg Heym, Das Fieberspital, through the artist Robert Knoke. In German for “The Fever Hospital,” Heym’s early 20th-century expressionist poem about yellow fever stigmatized patients is more timely than ever in the midst of the global PANdemic of COVID-19. The Fridman Gallery in New York introduced SO⅃ OS as a reaction to the closing art world, forcing museums, galleries and art fairs to temporarily innovate and move on to exhibitions and virtual installations.
Working in isolation is not for Galas, and his art explores the greatest threats to humanity, adding AIDS, intellectual disease, despair, injustice and condemnation.
“For me in particular, little has changed. I paint a lot in my house,” Galus said of running in his forties. “For once, I had to go outside to record special videos.”
Galas and Neumann collaborated remotely, twice a week, for more than two months. He worked in a studio in San Diego while he was in New York. Bright has joined since his New York studio for the past two weeks.
“I’ve acquired self-recording skills, outdoor recording and video paintings I hadn’t done before,” Galus said. “Daniel and I painted in combination for years in exhibitions and live recordings, but that’s the highest point of our paintings in combination.
Even the limitations of allowing generation have helped drive the process forward.
“The Skype connection would probably have made the paintings more intense and we ended up weighing many of the same concepts in the consultation towards the end,” Galas said.
Being confined to his studio is Galas’ preference, and the global fitness crisis has encouraged further introspection about the activist artist.
“The first work I did do from the beginning of the pandemic was to write two essays which concerned the exploitation of nursing home communities by, in particular, the governor of New York, to house extremely contagious post-ventilator patients of COVID-19,” said Galás. “This resulted in the astronomical and ongoing death toll of nursing home residents.”
Broken Gargoyles is an investigation and an expression of the “quarantine mentality”.
“In this case,I am dealing with the German government’s attempt to cover the extreme losses of WWI, by using industrial spaces to locate soldiers and citizenry with contagious diseases outside of the city,” said Galás. “As well, soldiers who had been massively disfigured by the gases and machine guns introduced by that war were hidden and experiments using plastic surgery were initiated.”
Galas establishes a direct correlation between the collective devastation of today’s unrest and the beginning of the 20th century.
“We can see this now as the existing pandemic, from the beginning, in which government officials hid COVID-19 patients among vulnerable and unprotected citizens of retirement home populations across the United States,” Galus said. “This is the biggest loss of life this country has noticed in a long time. It’s not discussed.
“There is no discrimination in this country that can compare to the discrimination of those without voices, without the physical ability to open their mouths in protest,” Galás said.
Broken Gargoyles coincides with the release through Intravenal Sound Operations of Galus’ new solo piano piece entitled De-Formation: Piano Variations.
Award-winning journalist, I have held senior editorial positions at the Associated Press and Dow Jones. Literature trainer, art workshop and art history with
Award-winning journalist, I have held senior editorial positions at the Associated Press and Dow Jones. A former student of literature, art study and art history with deep practical wisdom in finance and business, I explore the global art and cultural analysis markets. My reviews of the main openings of museums and galleries have been published in major newspapers and media platforms around the world.