Knot Project Space hosted Marc-Alexandre Reinhardt as the second artist in its process-driven residency platform Expanded Practice. Over a three-week intensive period, the Hull-based artist continued his explorations into the materiality of sound by composing with the spatial aspects of the Knot Project Space itself. Focusing on the Alexandra Bridge and its distinctive, public tones as a source recording, Reinhardt transposed into the space the engineering logic of the bridge’s truss system, the structural integrity of which is dependent upon a balance of compression, tension and mutual support. Anchoring activated piano wires to the walls and ceiling beams, Reinhardt’s approach to the residency accumulated and proposed a series of sonic shapes: vibrating, entangled architectures housing a collective resonance.
Expanded Practice
Expanded Practice was Knot Project Space’s three-week intensive artist residency, offered to producing members of SAW Video Media Art Centre to expand the scope of their projects beyond the screening environment and into installation/exhibition formats. The resident artist was provided with a fee, a materials budget, unlimited access to the project space and an array of audio-visual equipment for the duration of their residency, during which they are invited to experiment with the spatial orientation of the moving image, the distribution of sound, and other tactics for presentation and audience engagement. Through an emphasis on open, hands-on technological play and frequent discussions with Knot Project Space’s curatorial staff, the Expanded Practice residency sought to create a collaborative environment in which the artist strategises with the art-space around the materiality and physicality of video and sound.
In order to sustain an open, tangential structure for artistic experimentation, there was no final public exhibition attached to artist’s participation in the Expanded Practice residency. Instead, the public was invited to visit the space during a series of “Drop-In Sessions” throughout the artist’s residency period to view the work in an in-progress and modular state. The artist or curatorial staff was present at each of these sessions to contextualise the work for the visitor and frame the trajectory of their spatial explorations.
Marc-Alexandre Reinhardt
Marc-Alexandre Reinhardt is a multidisciplinary artist and researcher working at the intersection between sound, performance, video, and literary history. His practice, grounded in specific sites or communities, develops contextual and translation processes that investigate historical, political and cultural phenomena. He is interested in how critical, fictional and performative gestures may cultivate attention towards our contemporary condition.