“Scratching” is an immersive multichannel soundscape created and performed by cellist and noise/performance artist Katinka Kleijn at the Chicago Athletic Association in their Tank, a former swimming pool at the club.
“Scratching” takes its instigation from a quote by the late conductor Sir Thomas Beecham(1879-1961) "Madam, you have between your legs an instrument capable of giving pleasure to thousands and all you can do is scratch it." (taken from Classicfm.com ‘The best conductor insults’)
Kleijn builds immersive multi-channel soundscapes by scratching the body and cello, realizing the actions indicated by Beecham. Simultaneously, the actions reconsider ownership of the female and cello body.
Join us for a panel discussion and a drink afterwards in The Tank, with Katinka Kleijn, Whitney Johnson, Erika Knierim and additional panel members TBA.
Sound Engineers: Alex Inglizian and Kate In
About Katinka Kleijn
Kleijn enjoys a genre-defying, interdisciplinary career. Classically trained, she cultivates an exploratory practice at the intersection of improvisation, composition, visual art and performance art. Much of Kleijn’s work illuminates the cello’s anthropomorphic qualities, often by placing the instrument in thought-provoking new contexts. In 2019, Kleijn and cellist Lia Kohl waded with 30 cellos in Chicago’s Eckhart Park Pool for their devised work Water On the Bridge. Similarly, Kleijn’s The Body as a Variable Resistor (2021) shares a 9V synthesizer circuit between a cello and its player. Her collaborations with the Chicago-based performance art duo Industry of the Ordinary resulted in the widely publicized Intelligence in the Human-Machine (2014), a duet between Kleijn’s cello and her own brain waves which Time magazine called “a balancing act for Kleijn’s whole body.” Kleijn often presents her projects as co-constructions with the performer or audience, as in her situation-based composition Forward Echo, for 11 improvisers (2019), performed at Big Ears Festival by Ensemble Dal Niente. A Drag City recording artist, Kleijn is a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and International Contemporary Ensemble, and presented solo multimedia presentations at North Carolina Performing Arts, Library of Congress, and the Momentary at Crystal Bridges American Museum of Art.
www.katinkakleijn.com
@tinkatonk