Pavel Büchler

Studio Schwitters . 2010

+ TANYA LEIGHTON . Max Wigram Gallery


Strange unintelligible computerized speech emits in unison from seventy-five horn speakers fixed across the expanse of the wall. On a table close by, a lone horn leads the chorus… Studio Schwitters is Pavel Büchler’s homage to Dada artist Kurt Schwitters sound poem, The Ursonate, his ‘primal sonata’ or conception of what a sonata would have looked like and sounded before the invention of language. Using a digital German speech programme, Büchler made it read the entire text of The Ursonate, impressively producing its own alien interpretation of Schwitters’ original twenty-one minute sung version of the sonata. The programme resolutely mashes T he Ursonate’s very classical structure, radically changing content and structure, and extending the piece to thirty-nine minutes.
Max Wigram Gallery