'My daughter can do that too', is the traditional response to the kind of aesthetics with which this CD confronts us. The slogan is meant to be negative, but it can also be appreciated positively: children have an experience of reality that adults have lost. Conceptual artists can teach us this way of looking again (if we feel for it). The permanent exhibition Block Beuys, dedicated to the conceptual
… artist Joseph Beuys, is located in the Hessisches Landesmuseum in Darmstadt. There are about 270 objects in seven rooms, with Buys making use of the kind of filth (but how much we loved it as children) that is so typical of him: metal, newspapers, grease, food, machine parts. More important is the spatial effect of this exhibition: the first room is virtually empty, while rooms 4-7 consist of a claustrophobic sequence of 24 display cases. Richard Rijnvos had the opportunity to visit this exhibition in 1990, because he was invited as a guest composer during the summer course of that season. Rijnvos' Block Beuys was created five years after this visit. As with his example John Cage, Rijnvos works with translating spatial to temporal (that is, musical) relationships. The work consists of four parts: parts 1-3 relate to rooms 1-3, while the last part is the reflection of the remaining four rooms with the display cases. Block Beuys is played by the Ives Ensemble. Unfortunately (it has to be said) the Hat Art label packs its CDs in impossible cardboard sleeves, so that scratches become visible on the CD surface in no time: the kind of configurations in which a conceptualist undoubtedly manages to discover a deeper meaning, but from which the CD CD user only becomes hopeless. (HJ)more
