During her residency at SNG, O'Hara will focus on exploration:
- Gallery visitors and staff
- random passers-by on the Danube embankment
- the craftsman Luboš Straka creating a fujara and a pipe - 10.4. 13:00-15:00
- string quartet rehearsals - 13.4. 14:00-17:00 in the Atrium
The residency will also include a closing event for the public:
O'Hara in collaboration with Slovak artists (Štefan Szabó, Eva Sajanová, Michal "Krishpin" Zoller and Katarína "Chilli" Čillíková) will combine "Live Transmission" with the concept of "Deep Listening" by Pauline Oliveros.
Artist talk.
Morgan O'Hara's residency at the SNG is a unique opportunity to experience art in action and learn about the fascinating concept of "Live Transmission".
Morgan O'Hara (*1941) was born in Los Angeles, grew up in Japan, and then returned to the U.S. to earn her Master of Fine Arts degree from California State University, Los Angeles. She had her first solo exhibition at the Musée Cantonal des Beaux Arts in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1978. In 1989, she began collaborating with international performing arts festivals. In the same year she created her first site specific murals at De Fabriek in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.
Her works are in the permanent collections of many institutions including the Arkansas Art Center, the National Gallery in Prague, the Hammer Museum, the National Gallery of Art, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her site-specific permanent murals can be found at the Macau Art Museum (Macau, China), The Canadian Academy (Kobe, Japan), and the Free University OZW Building (Amsterdam, Netherlands). He currently lives and works in Venice.
In Morgan O'Hara's work, movement figures as the most immediate sign of life. The concept of 'Live Transmission'-that is, live transmission-makes visible normally invisible or fleeting patterns of movement through seismograph-like drawing realized in direct physical form on paper. By closely observing the intensity of each segment of activity, the direction of the live lines is transmitted, as well as their quality and intensity. This action of drawing is performed in a coordinated manner at the same time and preferably without thinking. It is not automatic drawing, but its opposite, which requires great concentration and focus.
This spatio-temporal-gestural archive of human activity, which O'Hara began to build in 1989, currently contains approximately 3,000 drawings. Occasionally, she sketches other signs of life: the movement of leaves on a tree, reflections of light on water, animals on a farm, the movement of an incoming tide, whatever comes into view at the moment. Thus emerges a carefully selected subject list of live transmission: cooks, noodle factory workers, secretaries, butchers, shoemakers, mattress makers, dancers, musicians, soloists, ensembles, bands, orchestras, conductors; poets, artists, performers, hairdressers, architects, doctors in surgery, psychiatrists, folk art craftsmen, children at play, or farmers.
During her two-week residency at the SNG in Bratislava, she will use the concept of 'Live Transmission' to investigate male and female visitors, gallery staff and workers, as well as 'selected - random' passers-by along the Danube embankment and in the gallery's surroundings. The residency will also include events where the public will be able to try out the 'Live Transmission' concept together with the artist, or watch the artist at work. This will include capturing the movement of a folk artisan at work or rehearsing a string quartet for a concert. This second event will combine the American sound artist and composer Pauline Oliveros' concept of 'Deep Listening' with the concept of 'Live Transmission', whichcould also be called 'deep observation'.O' Hara will end her residency on 16. April with an artist talk, where she will present the outputs from her residency at the SNG and we will talk to her about her work - as well as a performance where the artist will perform with Slovak sound artists and performers(Štefan Szabó and Eva Sajanová) and performers(Michal 'Krishpin' Zoller and Katarína 'Chilli' Čillíková).
