A KILLS B - WIEN, AUSTRIA 2011
performance at Ve.Sch - Dienstag Abend
October 4th
(with Christoph Meier)


A KILLS B - WIEN, AUSTRIA 2011
performance at Ve.Sch - Dienstag Abend
October 4th
(with Christoph Meier)



A KILLS B - WIEN, AUSTRIA 2011

A KILLS B - LISBON, PORTUGAL 2010
Sobre um céu revolto
fala enquanto dorme
de um mar olíquo
performance at Appleton Square

http://www.appletonsquare.pt/









Sobre um céu revolto... 2010, performance photos by José Maria Cyrne
A kills B - GRAPHIC SCORE
Sobre um céu revolto / fala enquanto dorme / de um mar oblíquo

A kills B - POEM
Sobre um céu revolto / fala enquanto dorme / de um mar oblíquo
(re-arranged from a poem in The Book of Urizen by William Blake)

Firme e denso. Grandioso mundo um.

Ergueu-se das águas e vagas vastas as apartei.

Poder meu. Cessam sem cair.

Liquefeitos torrentes em, mas ventos

implacáveis os dominei. Sou eu e eu era!

Vazio no equilíbrio estendido.

Natureza do seio vasto e nu. Nada o era. Onde.

Fim sem negro, agreste, vazio imenso um.

Consumido, o fogo contra o primeiro lutou.

Chamas perpétuas, em viver porquê?

Desejo vosso, será morrer porquê?

Mudança isenta de alguma solidez.

Liberta, dor de, alegria numa busca.

Porvir dos dias reservados.

Soturna reflexão embrenhada e encoberto

sacrossanto refúgio meu, na morada eterna

sombria solidão, minha da/na fundura.

Montanhas de cumes, porque ressoam?

Estrondos como articuladas palavras.

A trovejar, confusão escorrendo, que iam.

Águas e treva, nuvens de plenos já.

Gelados desertos em reunião.

Eternidade, número grande, que soa pela trombeta.

Espaço imenso no ente solitário do nome.



A KILLS B - VINYL EDITION 2010
Sobre um céu revolto / fala enquanto dorme / de um mar oblíquo
Produced by A kills B and Appleton Square


Vinyl in silkscreen print cover / edition of 20 + 10 A/P

SIDE A 18’ 27”
Piano / Filipe Raposo
Double bass / Yuri Daniel
Drums / Carlos Miguel
Sound effects / João Ferro Martins

SIDE B 8’ 39”
Vocals / Hugo Canoilas
Sound effects / João Ferro Martins

General Information

Sound / Joaquim Monte
Namouche Studio, Lisbon
Design / Pedro Falcão
Silkscreen printing / Nuno Bettencourt
Atelier Arte e Expressão, Caldas da Rainha
Curator / Maria do Mar Fazenda

For the first track, a jam session with several musicians was conducted from a ‘graphic score’ – as if it was an undulating landscape, something between the aerial and the desert. The classically structured music of the jazz musicians underwent two breaks or deconstructions.

The second track consists of a poem by William Blake re-wrighten in a backwards process. The poem becomes more concrete in this attempt to break with language and to make it autonomous. It then reaches the body like the sound of a drum.

SIDE A



SIDE B

A KILLS B - LISBON, PORTUGAL 2010
Sobre um céu revolto
fala enquanto dorme
de um mar olíquo
exhibition at Appleton Square




GREY MONOCHROME (blue stripe)
2010
Acrylic and varnish on MDF and pine wood
230,5 x 158 cm

GREY MONOCHROME (black composition)
2010
Acrylic and varnish on MDF and pine wood
252 x 183 cm

GREY MONOCHROME (yellow and white)
2010
Acrylic and varnish on MDF and pine wood
230,5 x 185,5 cm

GREY MONOCHROME (raw line)
2010
Acrylic and varnish on MDF and pine wood
230,5 x 167 cm

These paintings were discovered while de-installing a big construction made in the studio. We realize that something had occurred during this process, something that could not have been produced and could not be preconceived or made manually. A decision to exhibit these paintings was made and the only interference was to apply a protective layer of matte varnish, since we aim to benefit from an event, something that emerges before us and is in many ways what the work also ends up to be: work that simultaneously is the attempt of a program and the witnessing of what happens in front of us. The monochrome has always been something that A Kills B have tried to develop, and is, in fact, the genesis of a bridge between the first elements of the group.



DIALOGUE WITH BLACK CUBE
2010
Ceramics head, acrylic glass cube, pine board, iron tripod, speaker, amplifier, CD's reader
142 x 300 x 55 cm
Audio: 16' 07'' (On The Marionette Theatre by Heirich von Kleist)
(voice by Gerd Hammer)

The dialogue or monologue with the black cube is related to the history of the monochrome that for A kills B goes from Malevich’s Black Square to António Areal’s A História Dramática de um Ovo (The Dramatic Story of an Egg). It is also obviously related to the text read in German (The puppet theatre by Heinrich von Kleist selected by José Miranda Justo who collaborated with us on this piece) that emphasizes the existence of a discourse behind the ‘formal thing’ (the swing), element that also operates as something that keeps time for the viewer, linking the viewer to the piece.

The German language has the quality of becoming very mechanical to the Portuguese audience, reminiscent of radio plays and concrete language. The spectator therefore creates an abstract or formal relation with the text, very similar to the one experienced with the cube. The text is also layered with information that in the future could allow a re-territorialization of this work in relation to notions of ‘the original’, machination, and event.


A KILLS B - LISBON, PORTUGAL 2010
NAMOUCHE STUDIO
recording "Sobre um céu revolto..."

http://www.wix.com/martaw/namouchestudio



A KILLS B - LISBON, PORTUGAL 2009
DIMENSÃO RADIAL
RADIAL DIMENSION
installation project for VPF Rock Galery







DIMENSÃO RADIAL 2009, installation views

The motivation was to construct a space that cannot happen in just one week of in situ work situation. So it was pre-built and then reconstructed in the gallery. We wanted to have a space with the same density of a painting composed of several layers. Something that has difficulty emerging in an exhibition space, somewhat like the Merzbau – made from impulses, in an erotic fashion - and with a few perversions or randomly followed paths like using coloured neon lights that add a gist of the psychedelic or the placement of paintings within a space that is already a work.

This piece is a space within a space, like those gastronomic delicacies: a bird in a bird, in a bird. The space created invites the viewer to move in a certain way. Does this then make the viewer the performer?



A KILLS B - LISBON, PORTUGAL 2009
SOLO PAINTING FOR ELECTRIC GUITAR
performance project for ZDB / Galeria Zé dos Bois
(with Cara Manning and Filipe Raposo)

http://www.zedosbois.org/



(image by Margarida Mendes)

The lights and some possibilities for the sound were rehearsed but what happened was pure improvisation. The sounds modelated by Filipe Raposo, Cara Manning’s incursions on the clarinet, and João Ferro Martins’s tribal percussion worked as the net that caught the industrial sounds produced by Hugo Canoilas as he burned, painted and destroyed a guitar. This piece is obviously anchored equally in Jackson Pollock as it is in the Fluxus actions or Jimi Hendrix guitar immulation.

A KILLS B - WIEN, AUSTRIA 2009
Cabaret Tesla
by Ludwing Kittinger & Fernando Mesquita
performance at Ve.Sch – Verein für Raum und Form in der bildenden Kunst

http://vesch.org/

TWO STAGE TRANSFER DRAWING (sharing the present) 2009

after Dennis Oppenheim

Performed by Ludwig Kittinger and Fernando Mesquita


As A runs his finger along B’s back, B attempts to duplicate the movement on the wall. A’s activity stimulates a kinetic response from B sensory system. A is, therefore drawing through B. Sensory retardation make up the discrepancy between the two drawings, and could be seen as elements that are activated during this procedure. Because A and B are from different cultural backgrounds, B’s back (as surface) can be seen as a cultural portal for A ... in a sense, A makes a contact with a completely different aesthetics.

A KILLS B - CALENDAR 2009
Produced by A kills B and Inc. livros e edições de autor

http://blog.inc-livros.pt/

Offset edition of 500
SEOUL 7 A.M. 2008



A small performance made in Seoul using in a repetitive way the exercise machines that can be found on the street as part of the urban furniture. The sound that adds ironic density to this action comes from a tape that was heard being played on the street and purchased. The music is repeated with slight chord variations on the A and B sides of two tapes; however these differences were mostly imperceptible to anyone that doesn’t understand Korean.


THE FOUNTAIN 2008




Homage to Duchamp and Nauman. A fountain that evidences the strangeness of this society: a certain technological kitsch that grabs people’s attention for five minutes. Once again A kills B attempted to respond to this situation by proposing an invitation to the viewer: an invitation to sit and to be, just for a given period of time with the work or even with eachself.



A KILLS B - SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA 2008
YELLOW MONOCHROME
performance and installation project for Nam June Paik Art Center

(with Park Seung Jun and Lee Tae Yoon)

http://njp.kr/ff_eng.html







PLACARD ANNOUNCING YELLOW MONOCHROME, SEOUL 2008
















YELLOW MONOCHROME 2008, performance photos by André Gonçalves

All these performances originate in a shared principle: to enrich the experience of the monochrome, making it something erotic, something Dionysian and to establish a link between sound and colour that may be disparate and random and yet enriching to the experience of the performances.

The Green Monochrome has its origins in João Ferro Martins’s wish to destroy his old drum set as in a cult and Hugo Canoilas background in monochromatic activities. Canoilas chose the colour green because of its passivity and established a relationship between opposites since Ferro Martins’s jam session was extremely powerful, more in to thrash or punk.

The Pink Monochrome was the first one to remain as an installation and also included the decision to include an electric guitar by João Cabaço. This contributed to greater complexity in the improvised music.

For Yellow Monochrome, at Nam June Paik Art Center in South Korea, A Kills B had been reading Kandinsky’s The Yellow Sound and chose this as the colour for the piece. For this event two Seoul-based musicians, PARK Seungjun – a noise musician on the electric guitar, and LEE Taeyoon on the bass guitar - were also invited to participate. This time everyone rehearsed more than usual and the context was more institutional. The installation was less precarious and an additional layer of paint was even added to cover all the objects more evenly and confer a more formal aspect to the compositions made of shapes and lines, some created by chance or due to the functionality of the action. The final purpose is to allow the public to go inside the installation.