Canadian artist duo Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller began officially collaborating almost by chance, despite being married and having helped each other in their individual practices for more than a decade. Cardiff had been invited to do an exhibition at the artist-run space Western Front in Vancouver in the mid-1990s, and after working in their shared studio on what would become The dark pool (1995). “We couldn’t remember who the idea was,” she says. “So we asked the organization, ‘Can we do this as a collaboration?’ The fruits of three decades of collaboration have been brought together for a new exhibition at Museum Tinguely, which will include 14 multimedia works.
Make the works sing
As well as being a collaboration between two artists – “We work well together because we have different skills and different patience for different things,” says Cardiff – the works also rely on audience attention and participation. “Some spectators or participants have a magic that allows them to see things that others do not see,” explains Cardiff. Whether it is a table covered with speakers activated by the movement of visitors (Experiment in F# minor2013), or intricate details that may be missing inside the diorama windows of escape room (2021), the presence of what Cardiff calls “talented participants or talented spectators” can really make the works sing. While the artist refers to the curiosity and participation of members of the general public, sometimes visitors are truly talented, as was the case in New York recently when musician and Talking Heads frontman David Byrne is presented unannounced to play on The Instrument of Troubled Dreams (2018). “It was awesome,” says Cardiff, “the gallery kept sending us pictures of him performing.”
Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s escape room (2021) © 2023 courtesy of the artists; Luhring Augustine, New York; Koyanagi Gallery, Tokyo; and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco. Photo: David B. Smith
When struck, the keys labeled with The Instrument of Troubled Dreams trigger a variety of recordings, from singing to sounds of the sea and even spinning windmills. Cardiff says the duo will likely sneak in to play him at the Basel show, doing “a Hitchcock,” she says, in reference to the director’s reputation for making guest appearances in his own films.
“I have always considered sound as a sculpture”
Janet Cardiff, artist
The Basel exhibition came about after the artists received the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Prize in 2020, which led to an exhibition at the Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg, Germany, which has now traveled to Basel. The sculpture prize was first awarded in 1966 and there have only been ten other winners, including Richard Serra, Joseph Beuys and Jean Tinguely. This might seem a bit of an odd choice, given that while Cardiff and Miller’s work has sculptural elements, their practice is much broader, embracing elements of theatre, video and sound design.
But Cardiff sees it differently. “I’ve always considered sound as a sculpture,” she says. For example, the artist cites The Forty-Part Motet (2001), an installation made up of 40 loudspeakers arranged in an oval shape. ” For me, it’s [is] completely a sculpture,” says Cardiff. “The sound becomes so physical, the way it hits you and moves.” The duo often use “ambisonics” in their work, a spherical-like surround sound that can engulf listeners. “I think it was invented in the 60s or 70s by a British mathematician,” says Cardiff. “We use it a lot; George is able to move the sound a lot in this ambisonic sphere.
Cardiff also says that “many of our pieces are free-standing sculptures, although, like The killing machine (2007), they move and are robotic. She adds that “The killing machine is most similar to Tinguely”, an artist whose work is “not necessarily inspirational” but shares a “connection” with that of Cardiff and Miller.
Hybrid artists
“We are hybrid artists. We’ve always loved contemporary theater that pushes boundaries, we love any type of medium that pushes boundaries,” she says, citing other influences such as science fiction, books by Jorge Luis Borges and Raymond Chandler, cinema and contemporary dance. . “My biggest influence in the beginning was The Pier by Chris Marker,” she says, referring to the 1962 experimental feature film made mostly from stills that pushes the boundaries of cinema. “We just follow what’s interesting.”
• Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller: Dream Machines, Tinguely Museum, Basel, until September 24
