February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Carlow-born performance artist Amanda Coogan has been seeking volunteers to be members of a chorus that will head-bang to part of second movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on Friday, Aug. 8.
Coogan, who was short-listed for the AIB award for emerging artists earlier this year, has created a group performance piece involving the famous composer’s 1824 work.
She is no stranger to unusual works. A previous dramatic performance piece in the Irish Museum of Modern Art — called “The Fountain” — involved amplification of her urinating. She has also created another choreographed video performance, “Reading Beethoven,” involving “translating” the sound of part of the Ninth Symphony into physical movement.
The work is loosely based on disabilities. Beethoven was deaf when he wrote his final symphony. Coogan’s parents are deaf and she grew up with signing as her first language. In fact, she is a signer with the Irish Association of Sign Language Interpreters.
“Ideally I would like the hand-banging choir to be half male, half female,” Coogan said. “I have about 20 volunteers, but so far there are more girls than boys. The girls are more up to it. Fifty-fifty would be wonderful, but I’m not fussy.”
Head-banging is the violent head and body movement practiced by fans of heavy-metal rock music
“There won’t be enough time to get the head-banging really going. They will be head-banging for about five minutes. They won’t be dying after it and I promise them pints when it is finished. It is quite strenuous. I know from doing it myself that if you head-bang for more than five minutes. you start to realty feel it,” she said.
“It will mainly be a visual thing with the music played through a 3,000 watt amplifier.”
Coogan said the work was about Beethoven’s passion and impulses — one leading conductor had said the composer seemed to urge people to run over the cliff with him.
“The repetitive head movement will be almost like a native American dance, a shamanistic dance,” she said.
Coogan’s work will be part of US Live, an evening of live art, performance, video, sounds and projections involving over 50 other artists being held at the Guinness Storehouse on James’ Street on Friday.
“I think it should be quite a funky, grungy night,” Coogan said. “There will be performances happening left, right and center over two floors.”
The event is being organized by CRAIC, in association with Cork Artists Collective, the Sculptors’ Society of Ireland and the Cork Film Center.