Nour Closing Program: Film-Performance
Raha Raissnia and Charles Curtis
February 18 and 19, 8-10 PM *
Long-time friends and collaborators Raha Raissnia and Charles Curtis will premiere Nour 2, an expanded cinema piece at the gallery on February 18 and 19, closing Raissnia’s current exhibition.
The performance will showcase a mixture of 35mm slides and material from her 16mm film Nour, in a live collaboration with avant-garde cellist and composer Charles Curtis. Nour 2 expands on the layered and permutational qualities of Raissnia’s process by manipulating fragments of filmic material from pre-existing work in real-time, accompanied by Curtis’ subtly evolving cello drones.
Having met through the filmmaker Jeffrey Perkins almost 20 years ago, the two quickly formed a friendship and began collaborating shortly after on Raissnia’s film Freeway I (2005-08) and Freeway II (2005-08), which Curtis composed the original score for—an arrangement of sustained tones using looped cassette tapes.
A veteran of both the classical repertoire and the experimental avant-garde, Curtis is widely recognised and celebrated for his contributions to an eclectic range of scenes and musical genres, straddling the boundaries between concert performance, installation and sound art. He has collaborated closely with musicians such as Alvin Lucier, Tashi Wada, Éliane Radigue, Morton Feldman and Christian Wolff. For over 30 years, he has been a significant interpreter of the minimalist composer La Monte Young, whose seminal durational compositions have been credited with introducing the concept of the drone to Western classical music. Speaking of Curtis, Young has described him as “the foremost interpreter of my music in the world.”Performing for the first time in Hong Kong, Curtis will open both evenings with Glacier, a solo-cello composition written by the late Alvin Lucier expressly for Curtis, and performed in part as an ode to Lucier’s influential legacy. The duo has previously performed at Miguel Abreu Gallery (2006), Xippas Galleries (2006), Arika’s Kill Your Timid Notion Festival (2008), and The Drawing Center (2018).
* On Saturday (18th), the gallery will be open until 8PM.
On Sunday (19th), the gallery will open from 3-8PM.
Raha Raissnia’s setup for a performance with Aki Onda at Arnolfini, 2014. Courtesy of the artist.
Charles Curtis’ solo performance.