PUBLICATIONSJingles (Grazer Kunstverein, spring, summer, autumn, winter) 2017–2020 Errors hit Orient
Chris Evans & Morten Norbye Halvorsen
12” vinyl LP in 6 signed editions of 25 copies each, with a series of silkscreened covers. This album is available for 30 euros via Grazerkunstverein.Bandcamp.com or all six colors for 150 euros available from Grazer Kunstverein at office[at]grazerkunstverein.org
A download link is included on the insert.
Jingles (Grazer Kunstverein, spring, summer, autumn, winter) 2017–2020 was devised by Chris Evans as a series of short musical compositions—varying in duration between 0.74 and 28 seconds—that are activated by sensor upon entry and egress, to cumulatively proclaim and broadcast the arrival and departure of each visitor to Grazer Kunstverein. Evans invited artist & musician Morten Norbye Halvorsen to collaborate on compositions that would correspond with Grazer Kunstverein’s seasonally evolving artistic programme and to create sequences between the institution’s six entrance doors.
Originally inspired by bass melodies used for interludes in American sitcoms—that connotate scenic transition—the Jingles were made from percussive sounds built around Evans’ basslines. In single takes or edited recordings, techniques such as scraping, bottleneck slides and ebow were used percussively and then augmented with synthesised sounds. In the spring season, Shepard tones, sine-waves, and modal synthesis are introduced followed by field recordings present in the summer season. Filter envelopes, clave, tubes and resampling feature in the autumn season and for the final season—winter— white noise replicates wind noise and an ebow used on bass guitar mimics the call of a deer.
This collection of work is published as a 12” vinyl LP by Grazer Kunstverein, in 6 signed editions of 25 copies each, for which Evans has made a series of silkscreened covers featuring each of the institution’s 6 doors. The A-side is a recording of each Jingle in sequence by season, and for the B-side Norbye Halvorsen has produced an edit of the compositions. This edit opens with a vocoder like bassline followed by acoustic sounds from bass played with an ebow—imitating a deer call that features on the track as the lead synth. We hear an acid squelch, a campfire banjo strum and an auto clave followed by a real deer cry—from the spring season of Jingles—which was recorded on the Curonian spit on the Baltic Sea.
Since the original commission, the work has developed into a series that has been produced for Markus Luettgen, Dusseldorf (2019); Hong Gah Museum, Taipei (2019); SALT Galata, Istanbul (2018); Kunsthalle Oslo (2018); CAN Centre d’art Neuchâtel, Switzerland (2018), Para Site, Hong Kong (2017) and Fórum Eugénio de Almeida in Évora, Portugal (2017). As part of this evolution of the work, Evans first asks after a host’s financial stability. If the host institution’s financial situation is stable, a farmer is asked to mimic a non-specific percussive phrase, if it is unstable, an accountant is asked to do the same. A TV bass-line is then added to complete the jingle.
Chris Evans, Morten Norbye Halvorsen Grazer Kunstverein, June 2019
Two takes, 33rpm 12" on 180gm vinyl, silkscreened sleeve, signed edition of 200
20 euros + shipping. For countries not listed please email
I would take great trouble to try and make my copy as good a piece of writing as anything else I might do, as good as a poem written under the same conditions, even (imagining anyone would want to write a poem in half an hour in a cold, windswept football stadium). “On Football” (1966)
In 1969, English writer B.S. Johnson published the loosely auto-biographical The Unfortunates, a novel following a sportswriter who’s sent to a city to report a football match, only to find himself confronted by ghosts from his past. As “a better solution to the problem of conveying the mind’s randomness than the imposed order of a bound book,” the author published the novel in 25 loose, stapled sections, whereby any reading of the book would produce a different sequence of events, part authored by Johnson, part authored by chance.
In the mid-1960’s Johnson, a lifelong Chelsea supporter, took on work as a football reporter to earn income to support his writing. He reported on weekly English league and cup matches for The Observer and World Cup matches for the India Times. Curious to discover crossovers between Johnson’s writing in his novels and his match-side reports, artist Chris Evans found his reports on microfiche at British Library Newspapers, Colindale. In order to see the transition between on-the-spot reportage and the published results, Evans later photographed the writer’s original manuscripts for the same games in the B.S. Johnson archive, held at the Manuscripts Department of the British Library, St. Pancras.
Evans then suggested to typographer and performer Will Holder that they be republished, musically, in a manner that would echo the writing methods employed by Johnson. They devised a structure in which they could be scored for speech and a number of improvised themes, one per report, played ‘bottleneck’ on bass guitar. These are supplemented or predicated by two modular pieces of different lengths, percussive (clapping, no clapping) and affective (dramatic rise, dramatic fall, silence) that loop together. Algorithmically, this produces six possible accompaniments—augmenting the reception of the spoken football reports, which in itself is never delivered at the same speed, since its timing adapts to the bass guitar and vice versa.
Chris Evans (with Will Holder). Two takes were recorded by Andy Miller in Hamilton, Scotland, 2015
Job Interviews
Edited and illustrated by Chris Evans
Designed by Will Holder and published by Para Site, Hong Kong and uh books.
The ritual of the 'job interview’ can be considered as a courtship that’s conditioned by protocols that ask for a quite particular display: with social relations as material, a dance of conformity, the attempted imagining and echoing of expectations. The anthology of commissioned writing includes contributions by Nadim Abbas, Howie Chen, Heman Chong, Matthew Dickman, Jason Dodge, Holly Pester, Angie Keefer, Natasha Soobramanien, Marina Vishmidt, and Jonas Žakaitis.
Available from Uh Books
Cop Talk (New York City)
Bulletin 13, the Serving Library
Published September 2017
Published, December 2016,as an edition of Forms of Imagining, a series published by Project Press based on the exhibitions programme of Project Arts Centre, Dublin. This edition accompanied Chris Evans' solo exhibitions (05/11/14 – 17/01/15) curated by Kate Strain.
Text by Claire Feeley Dublin, March 2016
ISBN 978-1-872493-57-2 Editor: Kate Strain © The Artist, Writers and Project Press
Mime and Rock
Text by Marina Vishmidt to accompanying the exhibition CLODS, Diplomatic Letters, Galerie Juliette Jongma, Amsterdam, 2013
3 pps. stapled. Designed by Will Holder PDF
Goofy Audit, Chris Evans, Collected Works 1998–2001
Published by Sternberg Press & Thea Westreich/Ethan Wagner Publications, New York
Tirdad Zolghadr
'If You're Gonna Do It'
and Marina Vishmidt
'The Manageable Softness of the Solid Wine
and its Solar Radience'
Design & catalogue entries by Will Holder
Order from:
Sternberg Press – Berlin
Motto – Berlin
Aye-Aye Books – Glasgow
Goofy Audit Limited Edition
Available from Westreich / Wagner, NY
COLLECTED FILMSCRIPTS
Published by I.C.A. London, 2010
Blockprinted binder containing five scripts written in collaboration with Will Bradley, Walid El Kafrawy, Nina Power and Tirdad Zolghadr
Designed by Will Holder
Edition of 100, signed and numbere
Order from: I.C.A. London
POINT AT IT, LIKE A FARMER AT A PIG
Published byRCA, London (insert to the catalogue for the RCA curating department exhibition Friends of the Divided Mind), 2009
8 pps. Offset, stapled. Designed by Stuart Bailey. Includes poem by Matthew Welton. 2010
MILITANT BOURGEOIS
Published by Black Diamond Press, NY & International Project Space, Birmingham & Stedelijk Bureau Amsterdam. 2007
Edited by Chris Evans, Duncan Hamilton and Stuart Bailey Essays by Alex Farquharson, Robert Garnett, Jan Verwoert Designed by Stuart Bailey ISBN 978-0-9554923-0-3 Edition: 500 London, 2010
Order from: Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam
MAGNETIC PROMENADE (and other sculpture parks)
Published by Studio Voltaire, 2006
Raymond Roussel, Will Bradley, Natasha Soobramanien, Edward Gorey, Graham Fagen, Joanne Tatham & Tom O'Sullivan, Neil Mulholland, Jon Wood, David Burrows & Simon O'Sullivan, Padraig Timoney, Will Holder, Liam Gillick, Rita McBride & Glen Rubsamen, Jaki Irvine, Niru Ratnam, Keren Cytter, Matthew Welton
Colour images: Magnetic Promenade I - IV & edited by Chris Evans
Editorial assistance: Natasha Soobramanien, Rob Tufnell, Will Holder, Linda Gordon
Design: Will Holder
ISBN 1-900029-23-5
Edition: 1000
Order from: Studio Voltaire, London
RADICAL LOYALTY
Published by Peacock Visual Arts, Art Museum of Estonia and City Projects, 2005
16pps. Offset, perfect bound. Cover screenprinted in white ink.
Contains introduction and notes on the proposed sculptures.
PDF
GEMINI SCULPTURE PARK
Published by Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, 2001
Essays by Stacy Boldrick, Will Bradley
Edited & designed by Chris Evans
ISBN 1-900081-083
Edition: 1000
Order from:
Book Depository