FRANK THEYS - ORATORIUM FOR PREPARED VIDEO PLAYER AND EIGHT MONITORS

An ‘oratory’ is a musical composition employing chorus, orchestra, and soloists, and is usually but not necessarily a setting of a sacred libretto without stage action or scenery. The word can also mean a place of prayer with a small altar. In Frank Theys’s installation, this small altar takes the shape of a guitar amplifier/loudspeaker with a U-matic videotape player positioned on top. Around this little altar eight video monitors are placed in a circle. Out of the U-matic player, a videotape emerges, running in a circuit around the exhibition space supported by a circle of tripods, before entering the machine again. The eight monitors, facing each other, show the same close-up of a man singing the football anthem You‘ll never walk alone. The result is a continuous repetition of sound and image. The video becomes music, and the music becomes video. There is also a continuous connection between the image and its ’carrier’, as the images on the monitors seem to cheer on their own carrier (the videotape), without which they would not exist. Oratorium for prepared video player and eight monitors (1989) creates a spiritual space in which ritual and alienation meet.

Related events

• Frank Theys in discussion with Rony Vissers, Emanuel Lorrain & Christine Lambrechts about Oratorium for prepared video player and eight monitors
• ARCHIVE MATTERS – CASE STUDIES

This event is part of EXHIBITIONS