The Ring in the Piggy-wig’s Nose

is a new sonic bike experience made for Borken, North Rhine Westphalia by Matthews and The Bicrophonic Research Institute (BRI), commissioned by Stephan Demming and Micheal Rieken Hille – AKA,  kindly supported by FARB, and assisted by Isa Bartusch.  It opened on 27.08  and ran daily to 18.00h, 6.09.20.  FREE.

Receiving an archive of local Plattdeutsch songs from AKA, Matthews visited Borken for the first time in July 2020, where within this small COVID quietened city, she unearthed an ancient and common ancestry in the songs, the surrounding woods and city streets, animal, ceremonial, spiritual and pagan, plant, organism, breathing and moving, creating and shifting resonance.  Discovering that the Pastors Cow song was derived from The Last Will and Testament of the Pig, when pigs were slaughtered in place of cows and the city wall wrapped around it as a ring, she made this new work, the nearby land of Hieronymous Bosch, her recordings and instruments from South East Asia also feeding into the mix.

DISCOVER THE MAKING PROCESS HERE

 

 

Musicians:

Lucio Capece, bass clarinet, conch shell,
Kaffe Matthews, bell, drums, khaen, live electronic processing, MicroBrute synthesiser, Vietnamese cymbal clashings.

Matthews and the BRI have made sonic bikes works in London, Berlin, Bruges, Brussels, Houston, Hailuoto, Zagreb, Porto, Magdeburg, Ghent, Coventry, Bonn, Kijkduin with Nürenberg, Liverpool and Lisbon coming next.  INFO

The Sonic Bikes used were generously on loan from the Kunstmuseum Kloster Unser Lieben Frauen Magdeburg. With many thanks.

Matthews first met a ringed Piggy-wig amongst the Bong Trees in Edward Lear’s poem, The Owl and the Pussycat

MORE