{"id":19428,"date":"2016-03-03T15:16:43","date_gmt":"2016-03-03T20:16:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/?p=19428"},"modified":"2024-08-09T07:42:26","modified_gmt":"2024-08-09T11:42:26","slug":"natalie-brettschneider-at-cuag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/2016\/natalie-brettschneider-at-cuag\/","title":{"rendered":"Natalie Brettschneider at CUAG"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Natalie Brettschneider at CUAG\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

If you\u2019ve been to one of the opening receptions at Carleton University Art Gallery<\/a> (CUAG), you probably know what to expect: every few months, on a Monday evening, students, professors, artists, and art lovers visit the St. Patrick\u2019s Building to celebrate the debut of new exhibitions. You\u2019d have seen the crowds mingling by the food table, chatting about and pointing at particular works of art, or perhaps taking selfies. CUAG is where you\u2019ve encountered Canada\u2019s best contemporary visual artists. But this past January, it also became a place where art, music, improvisation, and Carleton University history came together to surprise and delight the lucky attendees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At around 6 p.m., with everyone\u2019s attention focused on director Sandra Dyck\u2019s welcome remarks, a high, operatic voice resounded through the crowd. Everyone swivelled around to find where the voice was coming from, and saw artist Carol Sawyer<\/a> standing on the stairs. As she began singing, she slowly started walking through the audience towards the open gallery, where an ensemble of Carleton University music students and alumni had gathered to join her in a special, improvised performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Carol
Carol Sawyer joined by Tariq Amery on bass flute. (Photo Credit: Justin Wonnacott).<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Sawyer\u2019s exhibition, The Natalie Brettschneider Archive<\/a><\/em>, was opening at CUAG that night, and the performance featured some signature pieces from Brettschneider\u2019s repertoire. In the exhibition, Sawyer  continues her decades-long project of \u201creconstructing\u201d the life and work of Natalie Brettschneider, her fictional alter ego and an avant-garde performance artist active in the early-twentieth century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Rapunzel
Rapunzel and Medusa sit down to chat about war, c. 1947b
(Credit: Carol Sawyer)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Canadian-born Brettschneider\u2019s performances in Europe were influenced by the absurdist aesthetics of Dadaism, and incorporated fashion, opera, and improvised scores. They were typically ephemeral in nature, often only documented with a single photograph. These kinds of performances redefined art and its possibilities, and we know that Brettschneider\u2019s work, like that of her contemporaries Emmy Hennings and Claude Cahun, pushed up against the construction of the male artist as \u201cgenius\u201d and their female contemporaries as passive muses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After she returned in 1937 to Canada from Paris, Brettschneider must have felt isolated from her avant-garde artistic community. As Carol Sawyer discovered, however, Brettschneider continued performing in Canada, even travelling to Ottawa in 1947. The CUAG exhibition gave Sawyer the opportunity to investigate the cultural scene in the capital city. Sawyer\u2019s most recent addition to Brettschneider\u2019s archive is a photograph she found of a performance that took place in Booth House, on Metcalfe Street in Centretown. The artist is surrounded by a small ensemble, some playing conventional instruments, such as a cello, while others perform using strange objects like a large trophy bowl, a cardboard box and a pot lid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Carol
Carol Sawyer and Carleton’s Music Ensemble (Photo Credit: Justin Wonnacott).<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

So where does Carleton University come in? During her time in Paris, it\u2019s quite possible that Brettschenider might have met Frances Barwick, a harpsichordist and art collector from Ottawa who frequently performed in Paris. Barwick bequeathed a selection from her art and music instrument collections to the university in the 1980s, along with a remarkably generous financial gift that ultimately secured the founding of the Carleton University Art Gallery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mrs. Barwick probably never imagined that the harpsichord she donated to the university would one day form the centerpiece of an avant-garde musical performance in the gallery she was so instrumental in founding. But Carol Sawyer, an intrepid collaborator and researcher, followed up a recommendation from music professor James Wright, which led her to Jordan Zalis, a graduate music student. He brought together members of the Carleton music improvisation community for this performance of Natalie Brettschneider\u2019s repertoire. In this case, the instruments were bass flute, cello, and violin, played by Tariq Amery, Agnes Malkinson, and Reiko Lokker, respectively, along with Zalis on voice and Nicolas Fobes playing Mrs. Barwick\u2019s harpsicord, a new experience for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zalis had met a few of the students in music professor Jesse Stewart\u2019s seminar on improvisation in theory and practice. As he said, \u201cI like that we were able to draw improvisers from a pool of \u2018classical\u2019 musicians who are so often accused of keeping music on the page.\u201d The lyrics reflected Brettschneider\u2019s eclectic influences and artistic contemporaries, and were taken from a vintage Electrolux brochure, a poem by Dadaist writer Celine Arnaud, and a poem by Hugo Ball, written for his Cabaret Voltaire co-founder Emmy Hennings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Carol
Bass flute, cello, and violin, played by Tariq Amery, Agnes Malkinson, and Reiko Lokker, respectively. Nicolas Fobes playing Mrs. Barwick\u2019s harpsichord and Jordan Zalis on voice. (Photo Credit: Justin Wonnacott).<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Reflecting on the performance, Jordan Zalis writes, \u201cI find that the people that this type of music attracts are so wonderfully open to challenging themselves, the art, and the crowd, that it is contagious and in all honesty, feels so good. What might come off as noise and madness and chaos is, to me inside, so calm.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Brettschneider performance was the result of an exciting partnership with the music department, and is a great example of the kind of creative collaborative relationships the gallery is forging across campus. This collaboration gave FASS students the opportunity to stretch, to take a risk, to use their knowledge outside the classroom, and to create something unique with the passions and skills they develop during their studies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can see the performance in its entirety below, recorded and edited by film studies students. The videographers, Landon Arbuckle and Lewis Gordon, working under the guidance of Jack Coghill, also participated in the performance. At one point, they respond to the cacophonous sounds of the music with erratic camera shots, building the tension and atmosphere of the performance. This is no lost photograph; we are very lucky to have such a high-quality record of an unforgettable Natalie Brettschneider performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An unexpected and fun experience on a Monday night, an homage to women like Frances Barwick and Natalie Brettschneider, who pushed the expectations of their art and society, and a celebration of Carleton creativity: CUAG is proud and excited to produce this kind of work for our community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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