Henning Lohner studied music in Europe and subsequently in the US and learned the art of film from Louis Malle, although John Cage was probably his most important teacher. In 1993 he made a breathtaking film with and about this chance and sound artist, ‘Die Rache der toten Indianer’: a homage from renowned scientists and artists (from Noam Chomsky and Dennis Hopper to Richard Serra and Frank Zappa) and from Lohner himself to Cage, who died in 1992.
Lohner follows in the footsteps of Cage by applying his principles (at least part of them) to video. His archive of hundreds of hours of found material is the basis of the installation ‘raw material’, an unfinished work. In the ‘course’ of at least half an hour, 11 different tapes are shown simultaneously on 11 monitors. Although each image and each sound is as important as all the others, the result is not a deafening cacophony, but more a spectrum of simultaneous impressions such as we continuously experience in the everyday world.
Lohner divided the composition of this installation into 13 chapters or ‘catalogues’, in which the voice of one woman gradually swells to a massive choir of rage and despair - a choir that sometimes screams in silence and which, in a Japanese prayer song, ultimately seems to resign itself to all war, hunger, injustice and violence in the world.
By using digital editing (AVID), Lohner can compose the material for this ‘sound and video installation’ like a music sore. ‘raw material’ is something like ‘String Quartet’ in which John Cage dismantled an existing composition and recombined it into new music with lines from a few notes, moments of silence and points where many different sounds suddenly fell together. It is also reminiscent of Cage’s famous ‘Black Mountain College Happening’ with multiple simultaneous occurrences without a central focus. Lohner’s result, in which chance plays an important role, therefore clearly reveals several different formal influences. However, there is one crucial difference in the working method, Lohner has not used so-called ‘chance manipulations’ or ‘chance operations’ which were so characteristic of Cage.
The basic principle of the installation was the concept of the Cartesian coordinates: each tape can be seen as a complete entity but can also be combined with all the other tapes. Each tells the same story but from a different perspective which produces a kaleidoscope in which we ourselves play an important role. Since you can’t concentrate on all 11 monitors together for very long, and it is just as impossible to absorb all the sounds and words, you make your own selection and thus your own story. By chance you catch a word here and there from the many words you hear; everybody hears different words predominating, makes other associations with the images. You are not manipulated or led in any particular direction as is the case in a traditional film. It is exactly the equality of all the fragments that gives each viewer the complete freedom always to discover new connections.
‘raw material’ is in many ways a ‘work in progress’; it is therefore well worth it to watch and listen most carefully, or to visit the work more than once.
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Lies Holtrop
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