Publication

  • Chimerizations
    Florian Hecker
    Author
    Stefan Helmreich, Reza Negarestani, and Catherine Wood
    Contributors
    James Hoff
    Editor
    Primary Information, 2013
  • GRANTEE
    Florian Hecker
    GRANT YEAR
    2012

Cover of Chimerizations, Florian Hecker (Primary Information, 2013).

Chimerizations is a book that investigates human's relationship to sound, spatial hearing, and psychoacoustics through processed photography and typographic translations of four sound pieces that were created by Florian Hecker to dramatize the psychoacoustic phenomenon of the auditory chimaera. The term auditory chimaera metaphorically employs the notion of the chimaera from Greek mythology, a hybrid creature whom, according to Homer, was "of divine race, not of men, in the fore part a lion, in the hinder a serpent, and in the middle a goat, breathing forth in terrible manner the force of blazing fire" (Iliad,6.181). In this book the chimerization of diverse inputs, from acoustics to contemporary philosophy, constructs the core of each of its chapters. Such efforts attempt to materialize ways in which the factual inflect and reconfigure the artistic perspectives of the audible and auditory. Chimerizations features essays by writer and thinker Reza Negarestani and curator Catherine Wood, and is designed by NORM.

In his installations, live performances and publications, Florian Hecker deals with specific compositional developments of post-war modernity, electro-acoustic music as well as other, non-musical disciplines. He dramatizes space, time and self-perception in his sonic works by isolating specific auditory events in their singularity, thus stretching the boundaries of their materialization. Their objectual autonomy is exposed while simultaneously evoking sensations, memories and associations in an immersive intensity. Recent performances include Push & Pull, Tate Modern, London, 2011; Instal, Tramways, Glasgow, 2010; Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, 2010 as well as a series of collaborations with Aphex Twin at Warp 20, Cite de la Musique, Paris and Sacrum Profanum, Krakow, both in 2009. Exhibitions include Sadie Coles HQ London; Lumiar Cite, Lisbon; MD72, Berlin; documenta 13, Kassel, Germany (all 2012); MMK Museum fuer Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt and Chisenhale Gallery, London (2010). In addition Hecker has a vast discography with releases on Editions Mego, Rephlex, Warner Classics, Warp, PAN and Tochnit Aleph.