Dates: September 9–December 11, 2016
Curator: Lucía Agirre
Film & Video Gallery (103)
From September 9 to December 11, 2016, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao will host the premiere in Spain of Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Sigh (2008). This will be the eighth piece in the Film & Video gallery’s program since it was inaugurated, in 2014, to showcase video art, video installations, and moving images.
Sigh is an audiovisual installation of eight projections in which different sections of the BBC Concert Orchestra seem to be playing the musical score written specifically for this work by renowned composer Anne Dudley. Although the sound is clearly audible, the musicians are not playing their instruments but merely miming the gestures and movements of the musical performance. The fact that the musicians are missing the tools of their trade creates a sense of vulnerability while also emphasizing the importance of the physical movements involved in playing an instrument.
Sam Taylor-Johnson (London, 1967) filmed the orchestra in several takes, splitting the musicians into groups. By projecting these separate films onto multiple screens, the viewer has the sense that he is surrounded by the orchestra. The artwork foregrounds the relationship between sound and image, between the music and the musicians and conductor, by implicating the viewer, who is the link between these two fractured parts.