The Intimacy of an Instrument for Two
DETROIT — When was the last time you enjoyed a shared vibrational experience? Spend a little time around Detroit-based artist and educator Chris Reilly and you will likely get the opportunity, in one of his Intimate Instrument Workshops, which offer participants a unique interpersonal art activity.
I attended a workshop on Saturday, May 14, at Spread Art, where Reilly was recently a resident. The format is simple: Reilly supervises participants, working solo or in pairs, as they construct a “Linguaphone of Tremulous Communion” based on an easily customizable kit form of his own devising. The spring steel keys and frets of Reilly’s instrument resemble those of a thumb harp (or kalimba), but there are two sets of tines facing in opposite directions; the sounds generated by plucking them are not amplified within a hollow cavity (traditionally a gourd), but rather inside the skull cavities of its players. Participants engage two at a time with the linguaphone by biting down on either side of the fabricated hickory base, which is shaped like a thick tongue depressor and supports the frets and keys. The vibrations that result from playing the keys are barely audible to observers, but transmit straight through the bones of the players, creating a deeply phonic and physical resonance.
The project was initially developed during Reilly’s graduate studies at UCLA, and the first workshop took place in 2013 in Los Angeles. Much of the work Reilly developed during his time there was informed by his involvement in an intense long-distance relationship: there’s a sense of integral vulnerability to it. Reilly describes his work as “grappling with or articulating states of desire for connection or intimacy, but then lack of certainty or clarity about where the other person is.” For one project in this vein, he and his long-distance partner exchanged their used bed sheets over the course of 10 weeks, at first sending them by standard post but gradually increasing to overnight deliveries.
While the “Linguaphone of Tremulous Communion” allows for physical projection into the mouth and head of a partner, Reilly upped the ante even further with a 2015 performance at the Ann Arbor Art Center. Titled “Take A Nap With an Artist,” the piece involved him donning a sleeping mask and installing himself on an air mattress in the gallery, offering an open invitation to any visitor to join him for a nap, “to increase creativity.” A number of them did. Reilly manages to strike a balance between his own vulnerability and that of his audience; he conveys a sense of fair partnership in these interpersonal art exercises. — Sarah Rose Sharp, May 17, 2016
Read the full article at the Hyperallergic website.