Draft:Volkmar Klien

Volkmar Klien

Volkmar Klien (born 1971), is an Austrian composer and artist. He works in electroacoustic and instrumental music, installation, software and performance. Klien grew up in Vienna and spent 1997-2002 in London.

His works have been commissioned by and shown at institutions internationally including, Belvedere (Wien, AT), Gray Area (S.F., USA), Athens Festival (GR), Wien Modern (AT), Ars Electronica Festival (AT), Volksoper Wien (Vienna, Austria), the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media & Performing Arts Center (EMPAC, Troy, NY), Transitio MX (Mexico City), Huddersfield New Music Festival (UK), Digital Arts Zurich DA-Z, the Martha Graham Company (US), the ZKM Karlsruhe (GER) and Ballett Frankfurt (GER).

Having received a PhD in electroacoustic composition from City University London Volkmar Klien has held research and teaching positions at the London College of Communication (London University of the Arts), the Royal College of Arts in London, the Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence (OFAI) and the University for Music and Performing Arts Vienna. He is a professor for composition at the Anton Bruckner University in Linz (Austria).

Work (selection)

Are the birds Happy? is a telephone guided performance created with Simon Lee and Eve Sussman, that premiered at Gray Area in San Francisco in May 2024. In Are the Birds Happy? there are no spectators, only performers.  It is a performance in the form of a public workshop, exploring the instruments of control that mediate our lives. Members of the public co-create the piece, combining spoken word, song and movement. Smartphones, FM radios and a live Master of Ceremonies direct the proceedings. Are the Birds Happy? plays with the central paradox inherent in our smartphone tethered lives: isolation vs. community. Tied individually to their phones the public forms a cohesive group and carries out a performance as one.

Im Sattel der Zeit [In the saddle of time] Is a composition and installation for ensemble, multi-channel electronics, FM-radios and a maze of paperscreen-loudspeakers commissioned by Gerald Hanisch and the Wien Modern Festival. It premiered in 2021 at the Museum of Modern Art Vienna (Mumok). In the saddle of time takes place in a labyrinth of paper walls which also function as speakers. During the performance the audience as well as the musicians cut their way through the maze of paper wall speakers. The performance leaves the speaker labyrinth transformed and largely demolished.

Anschwellen – Abschwellen is a performance-apparatus that was presented at Ars Electronica Festival in 2019 and in a solo show as part of the Carlone Contemporary series at the Belvedere Wien in 2021-2022. A video of one cycle of the apparatuses’ performance is available on Youtube.

Relative Realities is a hybrid enhancement of reality Volkmar Klien realised in co-operation with Thomas Grill. In Relative Realities a pendulum swings through an exhibition space. A video screen, constituting its pendulum bob, carves its path through the exhibition space. It presents – from its ever changing position – a view upon another scenery. The work as awarded an honorary mention at the Prix Ars Electronica 2009. Different versions of Relative Realities have been presented at Wien Modern Festival 2007, Klangraum Krems, the University of the Claustro Sor Juana, The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center EMPAC and Ars Electronica Festival 2016.

Traces of Fire, realised at the eva+ Biennial 2004 in co-operation with British artist Ed Lear, Traces of Fire is an early example of locative art. Lighters with hidden tracking transmitters with were placed in various pubs in Limerick, where they were picked up by locals. Throughout the following two weeks the artists tracked the lighters, following their every move, creating an exhibit from this urban habitat research.

Aural Codes was an AM-radio based urban sound installation rewiring computer networks a continuous AM radio broadcast. For this data streams at arbitrarily selected points of computer networks in the region were interpreted as digital representations of sound; additionally interactive gateways were installed in the local area. The resulting stream of sonic events was broadcast via radio as a noise band hidden between all the other noises in the AM range. Aural codes broadcast in 2001 as a fully licenced AM radio station for one month from Hoxton Hall, London, in Manchester during of the futuresonic festival and at the Huddersfield New Music Festival. Aural codes was awarded the Max Brand Prize for Electronic Music at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York in 2002.

Discography (Selection)

Albums

• Capital Must Accumulate, Löwenhertz [loew 038]
• Mahd – im Berg, Löwenhertz [loew 037]
• 'Variations in Air Pressure', Aufstieg AV [aav1001]
• 'Start - Ziel - Siege', Aufstieg AV [aav0801]
• 'Lockerungen', Aufstieg AV [aav0601]
• 'Strom', Aufstieg AV [aav0502]
• 'vlclel', Aufstieg AV [aav0501]
• Artist’s editions:
• Nahen – Weiten, 2015, KE2015-12i-03
• Zum Grossen Ganzen, 2015, KE2015-12i-02
• Vertrauen in den Westen, 2015, KE2015-12i-01
• In Fernen, 2015, KE2015-10i-01
• Binärdesaster, 2015, KE2015-07i-01

Recognition & Awards

• Media Arts Prize of the City of Vienna
• Scholarship for Composition of the Republic of Austria
• Honorary Mention at the Prix Ars Electronica
• Max Brand Prize for Electronic Music
• Alban Berg Stipendium
• Gustav Mahler Prize for Composition

External Links

https://www.volkmarklien.com/