Fe
by Alex Mørch

Opened July 1 at 2 pm
Exhibition period: 07.02.18 -08.19.18
Every day 10 am - 6 pm

How Does Iron Sound Inside Bunkers?

This question may seem to be pure gibberish but actually, you can get the answer in the exhibition Fe by composer and visual artist Alex Mørch. It is not a question to be answered with words. You must experience the answer. Iron has a certain sound and bunkers have certain acoustics. 

We all know iron. It is everywhere. We know how it looks and how it feels. Indeed, iron is one of the most common chemical element on Earth. Yet, even the things we know best have unknown qualities. We may be surprised how the most common material can give us new experiences. 

Fe is the symbol for iron in the periodic table. Also ”fe” means fairy in Danish, which makes one think of fairytales and magical creatures. An obviuous question would be: What does fairies and this exhibition have in common? One answer might be that this exhibition gives us an experience which could be called magical. Magic is in many ways the opposite of iron. Iron is a concrete, common and natural material which, at first glance, may seem boring. Magic, on the other hand, is erratic, unusual, supernatural and exciting. Mørch’s exhibition shows us how the most common material can become a medium of unexpected experiences. The common iron is orchestrated so that is becomes unusual, fascinating and enticing.

Alex Mørch is a composer and visuel artist. Both titles carry a great legacy. We might know the composer best as a pianist jotting down notes with ink on sheets of music. But Mørch’s compositions are setups of robots, machines and sound. We might know the visual artist best as a painter capturing the natural world on the canvas. But Mørch’s pictures are less palpable. He creates installations of raw material and light. Spatial composition, that is, where you as listener are essential because you change your auditive image by your movements in space. 

In the exhibition Fe you will experience the way in which Alex Mørch is a composer. Regelbau 411 presents an exhibition specifically made for the special site and acoustics of our art centre. Mørch explores the bunkers and builds sound machines and robots which make up an everchanging composition. You will be able to explore the labyrinthine interior of the bunkers and discover an sensuous composition of iron, machines, sound and light. 

Alex Mørch holds a master degree in electronic composition from the Danish Institute of Electronic Musik (DIEM) at the Royal Academy of Musik, Aarhus. His works always involve sound, technology and a certain atmosphere which may be described best with the word darkness. Interests in darkness, light, sound, rust, depth, space and technology is essential both to Mørch’s work and to practice of Regelbau 411. 

The bunkers on the peninsula of Thyholm are established as a permanent art centre of international contemporary art.We operate with two-year exhibition programs, which in different ways will deal with art’s relevance to the present day. Fe is the first exhibition at Regelbau 411. It will open up the initiate two-year program titled Orchestration and Attention, which is supported by the Danish Arts Foundation and Struer Municipality. 

During the first two years of the art centre’s practice you will be able to experience nine exhibitions with artists from around the world. Feis indeed the first in a series of exhibitions exploring the relevance of sound, light and video art to the human condition of the present in different ways. These exhibitions will help us get a better understanding of the concepts of orchestration and attention.

Orchestration is the process of distributing the voices, rhythms and tones of a musical composition to various instruments in an orchestra. But orchestration as a concept is also about how our world is orchestrated. Orchestration is a concept from the sphere of sound which make us aware of what underlies the world we are experiencing. How it is build. How visible and invisible structures shape our perception of the world. It is difficult to find an aspect of human life today, which in one way or another is not orchestrated and staged. For example, these words are part of our staging of the bunkers on Thyholm as an art centre and of Alex Mørch's work as an art exhibition. And Alex Mørch's exhibition is an orchestration of objects, sounds and lights that change depending on where you focus your attention. You can immerse yourself in the exhibition and think about how the physical orchestration of objects has an impact on your experience in the rooms.

With the theme of Orchestration and Attention, Regelbau 411 want to draw attention to the importance of the two concepts for human life in today's society. It is a society in which staging and attention economics are becoming increasingly influential in everything from visual arts to politics. At in time with redundancies of information, attention has become an precious resource and we hope you will spend some of your time immersing yourself in the art centre’s exhibitions.