anton bruhin: vogelsang/vogelsong/vogelsung/vögelsäng

On the occasion of the 2015 exhibition Le Caselle di Anton Bruhin at the Istituto Svizzero di Roma in Milan, Alga Marghen presents the complete edition of Anton Bruhin's 1977 cycle Vogelsang/Vogelsong/Vogelsung/Vögelsäng. If the idea of recording birds came from Bruhin's friend, the Swiss painter Hans Krüsi (this was a common practice for the art brut master, who layered recordings of the many birds sharing his living space into primitive multi-track sonic sculptures), Bruhin is able to use the same material to create a cacophonic and distorted world of unrecognizable nature, all in one low-fidelity stroke. In the 1960s, Anton Bruhin began organizing happenings and performances, creating sound works, designing and typesetting his own books (which he self-published with Hannes R. Bossert through April-Verlag), and drawing and writing poetry. Bruhin was a member of the first class to study at the F+F Schule für experimentelle Gestaltung in Zürich with Serge Stauffer, famous art teacher and specialist in Marcel Duchamp, where he came into contact with concrete poetry, Fluxus, and experimental music. Dieter Roth and André Thomkins are recognizable influences too. In the mid-1970s, Anton Bruhin was surely at the peak of his tape manipulation work. Always using poor techniques and equipment, he sculpted everyday-life sonic objects and turned them into very accomplished and yet totally experimental musical artifacts. The works presented here belong to this same period of expanded creativity, combining themes of excess and chaos with a pragmatic interest in simple structural schemata. To be consistent with the aesthetic quality of these works, Alga Marghen presents each of these four CDs in a silkscreened jewel case, with the four CDs housed in a numbered slipcase. Limited edition of 200.