Anni Albers 2014-15

While Ismini Samanidou was resident artist at the Joseph and Anni Albers Foundation in 2014, we carried out research in the archive and became particularly interested in Anni's friendships with John Cage and Buckminster Fuller, which dated back to their time at Black Mountain College. Our experiments making structures from Anni's unused weaving heddles relates to this. 

At this time I found a copy of the score of John Cage's Six Melodies of 1950, a series of duets for piano and violin in the Foundation's archive and it was compelling to imagine this as Cage's playful portrait of his two friends: the austere violin representing Joseph, and the more playful part for the piano, Anni.

Up to this time Anni had received much less critical attention than Joseph, and in the context of Anni's clearly deferential attitude to the Joseph's importance, it was impossible to resist the temptation to edit out the violin, leaving Anni's playful piano to take centre stage. 

The resulting new version of the piece was used to soundtrack a short film of the reflection of the trees in the pond at the end of what had been Joseph and Anni Alber's garden, filmed from a slowly, freely, drifting rowing boat and mixed with the natural sounds of the place. 

Digital video 2 min 23 sec