E.C. WOODLEY
AUGUSTSTRASSE 25
Exhibition
Koffler Gallery Off-Site at the Kiever Synagogue, 2010
Photo documentation by Isaac Applebaum
Developed by sound artist and composer E.C. Woodley, Auguststrasse 25 is a multimedia project that engages the Kiever Synagogue (built in 1927), initiating a convergence of past and present. By setting a living-room of a secular Jewish apartment from 1928 Berlin inside the historic Orthodox sanctuary in 2010 Toronto, the work overlays two distinct geographic locations, two spheres of life, and two moments in time.
For nearly a century before World War II, Jewish secular thought, intellectual achievement and artistic expression flourished in Europe, and particularly Germany, with unprecedented brilliance and vigour. In the years that followed, the German Jewry that produced some of the revolutionary ideas shaping modern thought was almost entirely obliterated. In the context of the contemporary European city, traces of an early 20th century Jewish past – whether exalted or banal – are often represented by a synagogue, still standing where little else survives of once vibrant, everyday worlds. The place of worship acts as a site of remembrance, both by design and by default.
Using performance, installation art and sound, Woodley’s work evokes the private world of the pre-Holocaust emancipated Jewish household with its cultural investment in an urban European past and the democratic Weimar Republic, and temporarily brings it back to life. The ephemeral, material daily life is portrayed here in the relative calm before the storm. Berlin radio broadcasts and echoes of a neighbour practicing the piano intermittently provide a subtle backdrop for a solitary figure, a young woman in her parents’ home. Her actions are introspective; they ritualize domesticity and emphasize an inner world.
Integral to the piece, the synagogue provides its sanctuary for the visitor to linger, sit on its old wooden benches and become part of the two entwined realities – that of the present day and that of the imagined Berlin apartment building. A contemplative space is thus offered, encouraging pause to experience the encounter and reflect on the nature of memory and history, self and other, and the domestic and the sacred.
Integral to the piece, the synagogue provides its sanctuary for the visitor to linger, sit on its old wooden benches and become part of the two entwined realities – that of the present day and that of the imagined Berlin apartment building. A contemplative space is thus offered, encouraging pause to experience the encounter and reflect on the nature of memory and history, self and other, and the domestic and the sacred.
Artist Info
E.C. Woodley is an alumnus of the Manhattan School of Music and the Royal Conservatory of Music. He apprenticed in London, England with composer Michael Kamen, writing music and arrangements for Terry Gilliam’s film Brazil. Recent music work includes film scores for Rhinoceros Eyes (2003), which won the Discovery Award at the Toronto International Film Festival; The Dark Hours (2005), winner of best film prizes in Edinburgh, New York, Puchon (Korea), Sitges (Spain); Cleopatra (2006), by Brazilian director, Julio Bressane; and the omnibus film Toronto Stories, which debuted at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival. As a sound designer and composer for theatre, Woodley is associated with two playwrights in particular: 2008 Siminovitch prize finalist Morwyn Brebner, and Random House/Penguin author Jonathan Garfinkel. Other sound and music for the stage includes director Jennifer Tarver's series of five short Samuel Beckett plays, That Time, for which Woodley won a Dora Award in 2005. As the creator and host of The Lost and Found, a long-running show on Toronto radio station CKLN-FM, Woodley has broadcast his original audio collages monthly for the past several years. His source material runs through the history of recorded sound, from newsreels to instructional records, or variations on Mark Dion’s only sound work created for the Goodwater Gallery and lent exclusively to The Lost and Found. Audio collage on CD includes the political work A Ward of the Government (1992) which uses the recorded story of a young woman interned in the 1970’s Canadian government system of containing “juvenile delinquents”, and the soundscape work Abide with me (New York No. 1) (1995), in which sound recorded in New York’s Herald Square in the years 1991 and 1964 is overlain in an exploration of quotidian memory and it’s virtual absence or impossibility. E.C. Woodley is based in Toronto and is represented by ICM® International Creative, Los Angeles, CA.
