Let Yourself Fall

The third LUCA biennale ‘Let Yourself Fall’ invited different people to comment on the contemporary art works in the exhibition. Vincent Caers was invited to comment with sound, which resulted in two pre-recorded improvisations and two live performances. He selected the works ‘Chapter 2.0’ and ‘Virtual Ground’ for expanding the experience with sounds, while he performed in the red chapter-room. He also created a soundscape for the trailer with a drone-video of ‘Yours Truly, Mary’. Each work is improvised with percussion and lsl.performer.

This improvisation is a comment on the art-work 'Chapter 2.0' by Fijn Atelier. The work shows the contour of a virtual chapter-room in the garden of the Abbey 'Keizersberg' in Leuven. The room is documented on a sketch of the initial building plan, but was never realized. Vincent populated the room with a discussion about the origin of the universe from a religious and a scientific perspective, a tension which was present in the 'real' chapter-room during the exhibition. The religiously-decorated chapter-room was filled in red light and contained a prototype of the kilogram and a manuscript by priest-scientist Georges Lemaître, the father of the Big Bang theory. The texts used are Genesis 1 and 2/1-3 and the article, originally appeared in Nature, ‘The beginning of the world from the point of view of quantum theory’ by Georges Lemaître.

This improvisation is a comment on the art-work 'Virtual Ground' by Ief Spincemaille. Virtual Ground is a glass-shaped mirror which the spectator has to put under the eyes and walk around with. The work creates the feeling of constantly falling. This track intensifies that feeling by using a shepard-tone-sampler for the improvisation, creating the idea of a constant downward glissando on the vibraphone. It starts as a single tone and expands and contracts again, connecting with the idea of the expanding universe as explained by Georges Lemaître.

The real chapter-room, decorated as a religious room, was infiltrated by science with a prototype of the kilogram and a text by priest-scientist Georges Lemaître, who is the father of the Big Bang Theory. The room was filled with a red light, representing the first light in the universe, according to Lemaître. Vincent did two performances in this room, representing the idea of first light and the expansion of the universe in sound as the origin of one sound expanding into noise.

Vincent also created a short soundscape for the trailer of the exhibition, which was a drone recording of the work 'Yours Truly, Mary', which presents a statue of Virgin Mary with a backpack.