Duets | Clinton Sleeper
Clint Sleeper’s Duets project is a sound art inspired means for facilitating collaboration in Elsewhere. Extending notions of collaboration, instruments created by previous artists-in-residence Kieran Morris (Receiver, 2012), Daniel Fishkin (Lady’s Harp , 2011), and the Invisible Collective (Singer Songwriter, 2010) were updated, revised or re-imagined. These instruments were then paired with a series of new instruments to create opportunities for the staging of duets at the museum. The unknowing collaboration between past artists and Clint is extended to visitors at Elsewhere, who are invited to explore the sonic possibilities of the instruments, the relationships between the pairs, and ultimately the relationship that this staging has with Elsewhere as a museum and exploratory space for creative construction.
Aesthetically, the new instruments embrace and accentuate principles of art production at Elsewhere, particularly the call to work with methods of bricolage, to build on the work of previous artists, and to respond to site specific conditions. They follow and extend these rules to solidify a relationship with the museum and the history embedded in the creation of a new duet. As a result, toys, scraps, disjointed materials, and clusters of the museum collection become representations of the space as they invite interactivity and musical exploration.
At the close of his residency, Clint oversaw the performance of duets by visitors to the museum and produced a series of videos based on his own playing of the instruments.
