Susan Mary Philipsz OBE (“Officer of the British Empire”), born in 1964, is a Scottish artist. She currently lives and works in Berlin. Her work won the 2010 Turner Prize. Philipsz uses sound as her medium of choice but self-identifies as a sculptor, first and foremost. She draws inspiration from music, history, personal experiences and specific geographical sites.
Philipsz's installation, Part File Score, is based on the parallels between the train station as means of transport and the displaced life of the composer Hanns Eisler (1898-1962). Susan Philipsz has developed a 24-channel sound installation (24 pillars in the main hall of Hamburger Bahnhof), which is based on three film music compositions by Eisler. Eisler fled from Germany to …show more content…
His father was Jewish and Eisler fled persecution from the Nazis and landed in Los Angeles where he composed scored for films and was eventually blacklisted by the US government as a suspected communist. For Part File Score, Philipsz created a 24-channel sound installation of a deconstructed recording based on Eisler’s musical compositions for films from the 1920’s and 1940’s: Opus III (1924) for an experimental animated film, the score Fourteen Ways to Describe Rain (1941) for the film Regen (1929) by Joris Ivens and Charlie Chaplin commissioned Eisler to write the score for his final silent film The Circus (1928). The composition was interrupted when Eisler was deported from the US because of his communist convictions. It never made it into Chaplin’s …show more content…
Although Philipsz sings many of her works, it is a vital element of her work that she has an untrained, average voice. She cannot read or write sheet music. As a child, Philipsz sang in the local Catholic choir with her sisters where she learned to harmonize. She says: “everyone can identify with a human voice. I think hearing an unaccompanied voice, especially an untrained one, even if it’s singing a song you don’t know, can trigger some really powerful memories and associations. If I’d gone to music school and had proper training, I would not be doing what I do
Philipsz's installation, Part File Score, is based on the parallels between the train station as means of transport and the displaced life of the composer Hanns Eisler (1898-1962). Susan Philipsz has developed a 24-channel sound installation (24 pillars in the main hall of Hamburger Bahnhof), which is based on three film music compositions by Eisler. Eisler fled from Germany to …show more content…
His father was Jewish and Eisler fled persecution from the Nazis and landed in Los Angeles where he composed scored for films and was eventually blacklisted by the US government as a suspected communist. For Part File Score, Philipsz created a 24-channel sound installation of a deconstructed recording based on Eisler’s musical compositions for films from the 1920’s and 1940’s: Opus III (1924) for an experimental animated film, the score Fourteen Ways to Describe Rain (1941) for the film Regen (1929) by Joris Ivens and Charlie Chaplin commissioned Eisler to write the score for his final silent film The Circus (1928). The composition was interrupted when Eisler was deported from the US because of his communist convictions. It never made it into Chaplin’s …show more content…
Although Philipsz sings many of her works, it is a vital element of her work that she has an untrained, average voice. She cannot read or write sheet music. As a child, Philipsz sang in the local Catholic choir with her sisters where she learned to harmonize. She says: “everyone can identify with a human voice. I think hearing an unaccompanied voice, especially an untrained one, even if it’s singing a song you don’t know, can trigger some really powerful memories and associations. If I’d gone to music school and had proper training, I would not be doing what I do