Prague Quadriennale – Song for Ghost Travelers

Song for Ghost Travellers was presented at the Prague Quadriennale as part of the Formations performance programme curated by Chase Angier and Serge von Arx.

PQ offers an opportunity for participants to realize time-based art works at the Prague Exhibition Grounds on the plaza in front of PQ’s main exhibition building, the Industrial Palace, in a variety of combinations and durations starting on 7 June at 10:00AM and ending on 13 June at 6:00PM (18:00). The works will intersect at random moments with the open environment, the public, the weather, and other selected works performed near and passing through another. The resulting disruptions and frictions will expand the individual contributions as they become part of a continuous whole unfolding from 7-13 June. The project focuses on clearly defined patterns and their arbitrary but symbiotic interweaving in the public space.

We are looking for artists of all genres who create clearly distinguishable art works rooted in pattern: patterns in time, space, sound, movements, bodies and/or materials. The performances or actions can be presented anytime day or night, for as long or as short as the artist wishes, and can occur once, or can be repeated at chosen intervals. The public, knowingly and unknowingly, will be participating as they move through or within the site, also affecting the pattern woven into the whole.

Song for Ghost Travellers is a score for twelve pigeons and three musicians. Inspired by the Chinese tradition of attaching spherical flutes to pigeons, this performance explores ideas of chance and structure through patterns of flying birds and an instrumental score for two flutes and bass clarinet.

Through a slight alteration the pigeon is turned into the actor of a musical score: each pigeon carries a specially tuned flute which produces a sound when the bird is flying. Following a notated score, three musicians on the ground accompany the air-bound harmonies produced by the birds and combine them with the choreography of PQ19 visitors moving through the Prague Exhibition Grounds.