«I visualize my work as a sculpture that is being refined and polished» – a rough dialogue between violinist Charlie Siem and architect Anne Holtrop on music and architecture
The rough artistic experimentation of classical violinist Charlie Siem and architect Anne Holtrop
British classical violinist Charlie Siem joins this interview from a wood paneled study in London, England, where he has returned to see family amidst a program of performances. Meanwhile, Dutch architect Anne Holtrop – «the boy who didn’t want to be an architect» – joins from his four-by-four as he off-roads on the way to his studio in Muharraq, Bahrain. From these disparate settings, they discuss the rough working relationship between musician and instrument, architect and material – with Siem likening artistic experimentation to a metaphorical sculpture the artist has a sense of duty to refine, polish and chip away at.
The two practitioners find common ground in their respective relationships to instrument and material, which are represented throughout as «acutely sensitive and deeply responsive». Never static, these relationships speak of French essayist Roland Barthes’ Material Gestures – the title affectionately chosen by Holtrop for his studio group at ETH Zurich, where he teaches as an associate professor.
Defined as the movements that communicate or express an idea, sentiment, feeling or instruction, American artist Richard Serra’s VERB LIST presents a beautiful summary of the material gestures, manipulations even, that can be applied to matter: to crease / to fold / to bend / to twist / to tear / to chip / to split / to cut / to splash / to knot / to flow / to curve / to rotate and so on. In conversation, Siem and Holtrop explore these gestures as they relate to their individual practices.
Charlie Siem’s historic 1735 Guarneri del Gesù violin
From the awkward asymmetry of playing the violin and the imprints left behind by the previous owners of Siem’s historic 1735 Guarneri del Gesù violin (which was once owned by the King of Prussia), to the time demanded for the casting of concrete, gypsum, aluminum and glass and the days, even weeks, during which the materials employed by Holtrop assume a fluid form, appropriating the molds or surrounding landscape in which they are cast.
Anne Holtorp on casting concrete and Charlie Siem on the awkward side of playing violin
CHARLIE SIEM
The role of the instrument is that you lose the physicality and become one with the object to channel the music through. Certainly with the violin, it’s awkward. It’s an awkward instrument in the sense that you’re one-sided. There’s a lack of symmetry that you have with a piano or cello. It’s coming out of your neck, so there’s many challenges to make it organic, to make it physically part of you. It almost grows out of your voice box, imitating the human voice through this mechanism of stings, horsehair and the technique of holding the strings down with the left hand and using the bow speed and the pressure of the bow hairs on the metal strings to make the sound resonate through the box of the violin.
Gypsum: a material that is easy to cast
ANNE HOLTROP
A good friend of mine plays the viola so I recognize how this instrument is attached awkwardly on one side of the body, which I find to be beautiful in your description.
As an architect, I employ materials that change their state of matter: that are fluid, that set and harden or that can be melted and, from their solid form, become fluid. Gypsum is a material that is easy to cast and sets quickly, whereas with glass it may take weeks to cool down. It demands the element of time in its transitional phase, and we can use this time in the way we form things. I don’t like things that appear static or were never
somehow informed, or formed, by time. They seem kind of conceptual or abstract. I like the opposite. I like that we can see the traces and gestures in the materiality as a record of time.
When casting materials you need something to form them in. Not only the material itself, but that which it appropriates its form from. I work with the conditions of a site, casting concrete directly on site so that you’ll see these imprints of the soil and the sand that is present there in the building. The site is not fixed or stable, it is constantly changing – casting is a record of that. I like that the surface is touched. It’s changed, it’s influenced. There is a crudeness to it.
Charlie Siem: a violin is a rough inanimate wooden box
CHARLIE SIEM
Over the last three hundred to four hundred years, the violin has had this tradition of great violin makers that have made instruments that have then gone on these long journeys through changing world orders, the instruments themselves almost more fascinating than the players. There’s this mystical connection between a violinist and his or her instrument, because — as I was saying before — on the one hand you want to be at one with the mechanical tool, to absorb it into your physicality, but on the other you are tapping into something that is much older than you.
A violin is an inanimate wooden box. It’s also not, because what happens when you play an instrument for a number of years is that you very much infuse your identity, your particular way of playing, into the fibers of the body of the instrument. The ghost of the player is left in the grain of the wood as a result of how much pressure they put on the strings, the particular way they vibrate the strings, and how that emanates throughout the body of the instrument.
Every player — if they play the instrument for long enough — leaves an imprint. When you roughly play the violin, you have this great challenge of also reckoning with the many players before you. I play a violin that is almost 300 years old and many grand names have played the instrument before me, so I have to somehow collaborate with these energies and then master my own way of playing the instrument. It’s a peculiar relationship. It’s not scientific, it’s energetic.
The instrument responds
CHARLIE SIEM
The instrument has its own way of responding and it might not listen to me. It still doesn’t at times. There are times when it just closes up and, whatever I do, it just doesn’t want to release the sound. It is a dance between me and the instrument. The instrument responds. It’s not just an object that I can pick up and use, it’s acutely sensitive and incredibly responsive. I could say that it’s climate, humidity, temperature — these more scientific and physical elements — but actually it’s more than that. There would be completely no reason why it should be at times closed, at times open, or at times a voice will emerge that comes from somewhere unidentifiable.
About concrete experimentation: Anne Holtrop to build up the condition of the space
ANNE HOLTROP
Before material I am mostly concerned with space. To be able to construct space, you need to be able to materialize. You need to construct walls, floors, et cetera, to build up the condition of the space. The materiality informs the way space can be constructed, in the sense that the material is not innocent. It has its own characteristics, the way it behaves, the way it forms, and why not take that as a driving force? At my studio, we are more like a laboratory for material experiments and investigations. That someone else actually builds for you, is a big difference from the artist because, most of the time, the artist has a more direct involvement in the construction of the work.
The problem with posing these kinds of questions of experimentation directly to a contractor is that they get worried, upset even. To be able to have already found a lot of solutions and answers to technicalities – as well as the poetics – in my own studio means we are much better at communicating with producers and contractors. Spanish sculptor Eduardo Chillida wrote about how he considered space in a way fast moving matter, and matter in a way slow moving space. I think it is beautiful how he put the two, in their material aspect, together.
How is music related to architecture? The bodily relationship to material and the construction of space
CHARLIE SIEM
It’s a ritualistic thing. It’s much more than just a necessity to be able to play the violin and prepare myself for a concert. It structures my life, it gives me a sense of integral purpose. Even if I’m not performing, the relationship I have with the violin day-to-day gives a sense of discipline. From playing scales to Bach or Paganini, it is a balancing process that I would find difficult to live without. I visualize it in my mind as a sculpture that is being constantly refined and polished. If I neglect this process there will be a big void, and so having that sense of duty to refining, polishing, chipping away at this metaphorical sculpture — it’s more than meditative, it’s deeply structural.
ANNE HOLTROP
Everyday you could consider your life to be different. Besides that we obviously use computers and tools, we are all part of the condition I described. My studio is like a laboratory, so it makes a lot of sounds and noises all day long. It’s definitely not a technical intent, per se. Much more immersive in the sense of physicality, the bodily relationship to material and the construction of space. It’s an ongoing engagement that keeps on reinventing itself. To endlessly re engage with the same thing or redo the same thing, it brings a lot richer experiences forward. Other life matters beg it not — I have family, I have weekends, I have teaching obligations — if I could choose, I would be in my studio everyday.
From Rio to Cuba – Charlie Siem on playing violin rough
CHARLIE SIEM
The first major concert that I played was in Rio when I was fifteen. I played the Bruch violin concerto and it was the first time that I was invited to play in a professional, public concert, with a full orchestra behind me. It was so different from what I was used to and had studied with a Russian teacher here. There was such an energetic warmth from the audience, from the conductor, from the musicians.
Whenever I have gone back to South America I have had that feeling — that sense of responsiveness from the audience, from the other musicians that I’ve worked with. I went to play Brahms’ violin concerto in Monterey. It was an outdoor concert for 10,000 people in a square. Monterey is a rough city and it’s not a particularly beautiful place. There were all these people listening in thirty degrees heat humidity — not at all an ideal performance environment — but there was this palpable human warmth that was so inspiring.
The Royal Ballet in Havana
CHARLIE SIEM
When I went to Cuba to play with The Royal Ballet in Havana — it was an unusual project, because I was invited by this ballet dancer who had choreographed a piece for a solo violinist and these three dancers — again, it was an amazing experience. There is such an appreciation for culture and music. People would go to the ballet and be mesmerized. The idea of traveling and getting under the skin of a culture in a way that you don’t if you go as a tourist, it was a real example of that — taking the virtuosic violin from Western culture and delivering it in Havana, and yet there was this absolute chemistry between us. The whole experience was thrilling and stimulating. And I’ve always felt that was peculiar to South America somehow. An all-embracing energy.
The uncertainty of the future: Anne Holtrop moving to Bahrain and Charlie Siem on how started his career
ANNE HOLTROP
I moved to Bahrain, in the sense that I like to be in an arid environment as the materiality is so present. There is no vegetation covering it, which sounds for most people like the most horrifying thing, but I like bare rocks and sand, because — in a way — it is a material that we can directly build with. I find it appealing, the relationship between this reservoir of material that we can see in the landscape and that it is just an interaction with a different arrangement of it that makes a building.
Another thing is the light. The light is so blazingly strong here. It brings out matter and space in beautiful ways. If I was to go back to the Netherlands now, I would be better able to work with the light. There, we would always complain about the absence of light — that becomes a preoccupation. But here, I would always open the curtains and tell my wife, ‘Look, it is sunny today’. After a year, I figured that was actually the daily condition.
CHARLIE SIEM
It’s been a fluid and spontaneous journey since I began my career, because you don’t know where you’re going to be invited. You don’t know what direction your career is going to take. I started my career with an open-mind, which led to all kinds of unusual performances and experiences and my career going in ways I hadn’t necessarily imagined. It’s the life of a nomad which, for me, was attractive. There was something exciting about the uncertainty of the future. Every year was a bit different, I would travel to new places, play different repertoires, work with different people — not always just musicians, but dancers, photographers and filmmakers. It’s a playful, childlike existence that I’ve lived.
Freedom, creativity as a driving force – the Dutch architect Anne Holtrop on artistic experimentation
ANNE HOLTROP
My start has become a well known story of the boy who didn’t want to be an architect. I wanted to be an artist, but through conversations with my father I ended up in engineering school. I studied building engineering and then I studied Architecture. After I finished my studies I thought, ‘I am free, I can do what I want now finally’. I started working for an artist, Katja Koening, who I worked for five or six years for. It was like finally ending up at my goal, but also quite a reality check, of course — my idealized idea of what an artist is, and then what the artist is.
There were a lot of things I learned, but one thing that helped me to start my own artistic experimentation was that I didn’t need a commission, a client. I could just start. The drive could just come from myself and I could just explore what I thought Architecture could be about. I think that was one of the biggest gifts that the artist gave me. There is always a level of dependence. You need to be able to make a living out of something, but I think it should never be the driving force. At least, that feels extremely uncomfortable. I believe much more in my own intrinsic forces. The better that I am able to formulate that, to express that, the more precise the engagement with the client will be. I cannot ask a client at the start of a project: ‘Please, tell me exactly what you want’.
We want Mozart: Charlie Siem and his violin
CHARLIE SIEM
With the violin, there’s a set repertoire and certain concert series are artistically directed, so they’re going to want these key pieces from the canon. If they say: ‘We want Mozart’, I might not have thought about playing the Mozart concerto for years and then actually that is a wonderful opportunity for me to rework my interpretation of the Mozart concerto — or whoever it might be — and then be able to go on stage and deliver it.
There’s Mendelssohn, Bach, Brahms, Beethoven violin concerto programmes in various concerto seasons and if I’m invited to play one of these standard pieces, I’m always going to say yes, because it’s a great challenge to play these pieces as a solo violinist. They’re works of genius and there’s a heroic element to going on stage and performing a Tchaikovsky or Sibelius violin concerto. That’s the vocational part. But then, if I’m thinking from year to year, programming and deciding what to play comes from a personal place of where I am with myself as a human being in my own life in that particular moment.
The body of work according to Anne Holtrop
ANNE HOLTROP
I believe in a body of work. There’s not a singular work. It’s all about how the total work builds up. When you start, you have just this one project — the first hunch about what you think you’re interested in. When you do more work, what I find interesting is that the body of work becomes a kind of critical mass. It becomes a way to criticize what we are doing right now at this moment. And you don’t want to do the same thing either, so you also try to escape that weight. It is this kind of entanglement with the previous work.
We recently took out our previous work, all the models out of their boxes, crates and storage space, and we opened them up again so that we could revisit them, see them, and have them present. This is also why I think the work is independent from a commission, independent from a client. Of course the work addresses things — from the wishes of the client to the agendas we are interested in exploring. But the work also depends on its own existence.
Anne Holtorp, the architect of concrete
Anne Holtorp graduated in architecture in 2005 at the Akademie van Bouwkunst in Amsterdam and opened his own studio in 2009, which is now based in Muharraq (Bahrain) and Amsterdam (Netherlands). His works range from models to temporary installations and buildings and he is famous for his concrete experimentations.
Charlie Siem, British violinist
Charlie Siem is a British violinist. Born in London to a Norwegian father and British mother, Siem began to play the violin at the age of three. After hearing a broadcast of Yehudi Menuhin playing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. Charlie Siem plays the 1735 Guarneri del Gesù violin, known as the ‘D’Egville’.
