6 May – 31 August 2017
Monday to Saturday, 2–6 pm, admission free
Palazzetto Bru Zane – Venice
As part of its programme of support for photography, the Fondation Bru is pleased to present “LISTEN, Imaging American Music” by Rhona Bitner.
The LISTEN project is a visual catalogue of American Rock n’ Roll history. It began in 2006 with a desire to image CBGB, the iconic temple of Punk on Manhattan’s Bowery, before it closed its doors for good. That click of the shutter, days before Patti visual account of American music’s inner architecture. It took Bitner across the United States in search of the recording studios,clubs, concert halls, arenas, ballrooms, churches, living rooms, prisons and fields where a generation’s most vital music was created, played, witnessed and engraved.
Assembled over ten years of research and road trips, this expansive photographic undertaking includes over 350 images. In them we can still hear the guitar riffs, drum beats and shouts of the audience. The project constitutes a unique and intruiging landscape of this musical heritage.
«Experiencing music, listening, is an act both collective and personal.
For this reason I stood in the spaces alone.
Room is cleared for memory, which in turn accepts time.
And time is the heart of music, as the pulse and rhythm of call and response.
LISTEN is my response.”. » Rhona Bitner
By exhibiting a selection of photos from LISTEN in the setting of the Palazzetto Bru Zane during the Venice Art Biennale, the
Fondation Bru is furthering its commitment to cultural and, in particular, musical heritage. Through the work of photographer
Rhona Bitner, it invites us to rediscover a landscape of music in the United States.
More about the Fondation Bru commitments in the field of photography.