Oliver Beer

About the Performer
Born in 1985, British artist Oliver Beer is interested in the relationship between sound and space, particularly the voice and architecture. He has translated his research into fascinating performances in which spectators take part by the mere fact of their presence, and he makes sculptures and videos that embody, literally or metaphorically, the plastic expression of this subtle relationship and the way the human body experiences it. Within and alongside his work with sound, Oliver Beer creates subtle and diverse sculptural, installation and film projects whose provenance sometimes seems biographical; but in which his play with universal – often intimate – concerns draws on shared emotions and perceptions. His work has been the subject of many screenings as well as solo and group exhibitions, notably at the Thaddeaus Ropac, London, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; the Palais de Tokyo, Fondation Vuitton and Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Musée d'art contemporain, Lyon; Modern Art Oxford; WIELS, Brussels; the Ménagerie de Verre, Paris; the Hebbel Theater, Berlin. 

Exploring ideas of cultural memory and "inherited music," pairs of singers lock mouths to perform a composition drawing on their earliest musical memories. Mouth-to-mouth, they sing through each other’s facial cavities to create a single hybrid voice. Their musical memories and their bodies become an incarnation, or resonance, of fugitive sound.