JANET CARDIFFThe Forty Part Motet

Co-commissioned by BALTIC as part of our pre-opening programme, we are delighted to present Janet Cardiff’s The Forty Part Motet which has delighted and moved audiences around the world over the last decade. It returns to the North East for the first time since its original showing at Newcastle Castle Keep and for the fist time ever at BALTIC.  

A reworking of the renaissance choral work for forty voices Spem in Alium Nunquam Habui 1573 by Thomas Tallis, The Forty Part Motet consists of forty separately recorded voices played back through forty individual speakers grouped in eight choirs of five singers. The work allows the audience to get inside the music and experience it almost tangibly as the voices weave in and out of each other. 

EADWEARD MUYBRIDGEEadweard James Muybridge (9 April 1830 – 8 May 1904) was an English photographer important for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion and in motion-picture projection. He adopted the name Eadweard Muybridge, believing it to be the original Anglo-Saxon form of his name. He immigrated to the United States as a young man but remained obscure until 1868, when his large photographs of Yosemite Valley, California, made him world famous. Muybridge is known for his pioneering work on animal locomotion in 1877 and 1878, which used multiple cameras to capture motion in stop-action photographs, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the flexible perforated film strip used in cinematography.

DUANE MICHALSDuane Michals (born February 18, 1932) is an American photographer. Michals' work makes innovative use of photo-sequences, often incorporating text to examine emotion and philosophy.

Though he has not been involved in gay civil rights, his photography has addressed gay themes. Michals cites Balthus, William Blake, Lewis Carroll, Thomas Eakins, René Magritte, and Walt Whitman as influences on his art. In turn, he has influenced photographers such as David Levinthal and Francesca Woodman.

He is noted for two innovations in artistic photography developed in the 1960s and 1970s. First, he "[told] a story through a series of photos” as in his 1970 book Sequences. Second, he handwrote text near his photographs, thereby giving information that the image itself could not convey.

“Trust that little voice in your head that says

'Wouldn't it be interesting if...';

And then do it.”