VIA

(48 Dante Variations)

  • "Over the course of ten minutes, a listener is treated to a remarkable, sustained exercise in repetition and variation. Certain words and phrases recur insistently - 'midway,' I found myself, 'dark wood' - creating a stable backdrop against which variations from the norm stand out with unusual vividness."

    —Brian Reed, artist, writer, and curator of Shorelines

  • "She creates something new by exposing all the old layers, ultimately creating a table or a visible matrix of the discrete points that have composed the unseen narrative of literary tradition."

    —Laura Goldstein, Somewhere

ELEMENTS

Audiotext, hanging headphone, metallic text on wall.

TEAM

Caroline Bergvall
Ciarán Maher: Composer

OVERVIEW

Variation piece based on 47 translations into English of Dante’s opening lines of The Inferno. The 48th variation composed by Ciaran Maher as a fractal structure from the voice recording. Full text and extensive compositional note in Fig (2004).

via1.jpeg

Fundacio Tapies

Barcelona
2004

KHUMU museum

Tallinn
2005

REVIEWS

  • Lost already walking: Caroline Bergvall’s VIA Jacket #34 (October 2007)

    —Brian Reed, Jacket

  • How we read Caroline Bergvall’s VIA and why we should care Jacket #38. Late 2009.

    —Genevieve Kaplan, Jacket

  • Christine Hume: Review of VIA, Raintaxi Review of Books. Spring 2007.

  • Michael Lieberman: on VIA Book Patrol, 15 Dec 2009.

  • Vincent Broqua: Aux Limites de la Traduction : Caroline Bergvall Le Matricule des Anges, no. 114, juin 2010 – Essay

  • Laura Goldstein: Translation as Performance: Bergvall’s VIA

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