300 copies The record Rire, Ridere, Laugh, Lachen comes from the homonymous piece about laughing as laughing of the Berlin artist Antonia Baehr. In front of a score and with her hands on the turntable, Baehr explores this expression as a sovereign entity, in separation from causal baggage; jokes, tickles, narrative, humor, joy, looking at the thing itself: the sound and shape, the music, choreography and drama, the rhythm and the gesture of laughter. For the listener, contamination is an unavoidable by-product.
On the occasion of the Art Fall '10 performance series curated by Xing at the PAC Pavilion of Contemporary Art in Ferrara in 2010, a limited edition record was produced presenting two miniature studies on body linguistics and the laughter of the Baehr family (Antonia and cousin Martin Baehr - relatives Bettina, Jani, Fanzel, Pauline, Henry, etc, remain outside). This experiment of consanguineous comparison through vocality, arises from the commission of scores on laughing entrusted by Antonia Baehr to artists, friends and acquaintances that merged into the performance Rire.
Her father Ulrich, one of the people involved, relaunched with the following research hypothesis: Does the Spengler family's laugh, for example, differs significantly from that of the Baehr family? a question that provided the basis for the variations that merged into an anomalous musical suite, now on this record.
PS. With two copies of the record it is possible to make a DJ session, comparing A side (Antonia Baehr, daughter) with B side (Ulrich Baehr, cousin) who perform the same laugh score.
Antonia Baehr is a choreographer, performer, filmmaker, and visual artist based in Berlin. Her works explore the fiction of the everyday and of the theatre, among other themes, setting strange connections -and disconnections- in motion. Baher maps out the forces that press on us in the form of rules and habits, unveils awkward correspondences and shakes up categories: human or animal, male or female, living or dead. Baehr is the producer of her alter egos: the horse whisperer and dancer Werner Hirsch, the musician and choreographer Henri Fleur, the composer Henry Wilt, and the aspirant New Music composer and ex-husband Henry Wilde.
