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Apart from their musical qualities, the artist is particularly interested in the history of reception of these pieces, as well as their social and political embedding, each as interpreted in our time. Sala’s early video works from the late 1990s used primarily documentary strategies to explore post-communist life in his native Albania. Somewhat later, in the early 2000s, his interest shifted to the psychological effects of acoustic experiences. The artist uses music and sound to create complex cinematic compositions that evoke mental images when viewed, stir memories and convey emotions. Since the mid-2000s, Sala has increasingly included musicians in his films and in live performances. He has also created complex object-sound installations, some incorporating historical instruments. His solo exhibitions are themselves both dramaturgically and spatially composed—similar to a piece of music. They respond to the particularities of the (museum) architecture in a site-specific way, thereby providing visitors with a visual-acoustic spatial experience.

The title of the video Unravel, 2013, is a reference both to the English verb “unravel” and to the surname of Maurice Ravel, composer of a famous piano concerto for the left hand. The video shows a woman with headphones, a DJane, so to speak, listening to two different versions of the concerto and attempting to synchronize them on a turntable. Showing utmost concentration and professional stamina, she devotes herself to this inherently impossible task for the entire duration of the nearly two-hour performance. The camera circles the young woman once, but lingers for a long while on a close-up of her hands stopping and releasing the two records on the turntable. It is only closer to the end that we see the architectural setting and glimpse something of the outside through an open door. It is the monumental architecture of the German Pavilion on the Giardini in Venice, where the Venice Biennale is held every two years. This is because in 2013, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Élysée Treaty, Germany and France each presented their national exhibitions in the other country’s pavilion for the first time. Anri Sala, who represented France that year, realized a three-part video installation.

The two recordings of the concerto were performed by pianists Louis Lortie and Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, respectively, accompanied by the French National Orchestra. The artist changed the tempo of the concerto for each pianist, so that the two performances progressed synchronously and asynchronously at the same time. This creates the perception of musical echoes, which are made more prominent by dynamic repetitions. The seemingly disoriented tempos complicate the piece, lengthen and shorten it, push and pull on the ears and brains of listeners—but we do not hear what the DJ hears. What remains is the attempt, together and independently of one another, to disentangle and unravel the piece of music: to return it to its beginnings as a unified, harmonic whole. The dissolution happens at the very end, in the final bar of the concerto, when the difference in tempos simultaneously opens up a resonance chamber for sonic dissonance that transforms the play with time into a visual-acoustic experience of space. Hence the artist not only opens up an acoustic resonance chamber, he also builds a constant tension that both abandons and counteracts the usual listening experience—in this case that of classical music. 

The approach Sala takes in this work also exemplifies his artistic system of coordinates, which he sums up as follows: “Music is a trigger, a point of departure, but also a way of cultivating time and allowing it to unfold according to a schedule. Our society sees the relationship between image and music as hierarchical, like the one between a master and his slave. Music usually passively follows the image—as it does in mainstream cinema, for example: music is added once everything else has already been thought out. It functions as a code designed to heighten the audience’s emotional response to a scene. My approach is the other way around: the music is there at the beginning, it’s the action you see in the image—what you hear is what you see.”¹

Anri Sala (b. 1974 in Tirana, Albania) lives and works in Berlin. He studied in Tirana, Paris, and Tourcoing. His work has been distinguished with numerous awards, including the Vincent Award (2014). Solo exhibitions include those at GAMeC Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bergamo (2022); Kunsthaus Bregenz (2021); MUDAM Musée d’Art Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg (2019); Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2019); Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2017); the New Museum, New York (2016); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2014); Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2012); and Serpentine Gallery, London (2011). Sala has participated in numerous group exhibitions and biennials including the 57th Venice Biennale (2017); and the 55th Venice Biennale (2013), where he represented France; dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel (2012); the 29th Bienal de São Paulo (2010); the 2nd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2007); and the 4th Berlin Biennial (2006).

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