Career
Kubisch moved to Milan in 1973 [8] and began performing in 1974. She held concerts in Europe and the United States. From 1974 to 1980 she began creating video concerts and installations with Italian artist Fabrizio Plessi. [9] She appeared in the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art (LAICA) show Sound. [10] She created her first sound installations and sound sculptures in 1980 and began working in electroacoustic composition. Her works during this time included Two and Two (1977), [11] a live, multimedia performance and Tempo Liquido (1979), a minimalist piece. [12]
From 1980 to 1981, Kubisch began studying electronics at the Technical Institute of Milan and began working with electromagnetic induction. She began creating sound installations as a way to move out of the concert hall space. Her 1981 work Il Respiro del Mare marked the beginning of her work with electromagnetic induction, [13] in which electronic sounds can be heard with special headphones. [4] [14]
In 1982, Kubisch participated in the Venice Biennale. [15] In 1986 she began working with a new medium, ultraviolet light, including Landscape. [16]
In 1987 she moved to Berlin. [17] During that time, she created the pieces On Air (1984) and Iter Magneticum (1986) and "Night Flight" (1987). In 1989 she became a lecturer at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, Germany. From 1990 to 1991, Kubisch began creating her first works with solar energy. She also served as a guest lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Münster and received a working grant from the Senator for Cultural Affairs, Berlin. After 1991 and until 1994 she served as a guest professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin. In 1992 she was given an international residency project by the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council of New Zealand. From 1994 to 1995, Kubisch served as a guest professor at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris.
Kubisch's 1994 installation Sechs Spiegel is one of her better-known pieces, and the sound was recorded and released as a CD. The piece used the architectural proportions of the German building the Ludgwigskirche to determine the rates of repetitions and pauses in vibrating drinking glasses. [4] From 1994 to 2013 Kubisch was professor of sculpture and media art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Saarbrücken. [18]
In 1996, Kubisch created the permanent installation The Clocktower Project at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts, a project in which she reactivated a clock tower that had long been out of commission. [19] She created and recorded sounds for the project by ringing, striking, hammering and brushing the bells of the clock with different objects. [20] In 1997, she was made a member of the Academy of Arts, Berlin. [21]
In 2000, Kubisch was the feature of a 20-year retrospective solo exhibition in Russelsheim. [4]
In 2003 she began her Electrical Walks projects, which would become some of her most famous works. [22] The walks are a guided tour through a city, where participants are given special headphones, designed by Kubisch, and directed to parts of the city that have interesting soundscapes. [23] She created personal walks - not open to the public - in Germany, England, France, Ireland, Japan, Latvia, Sweden, Switzerland, Slovakia, Spain, Taiwan, and the United States. She has held public walks in Berlin, Cologne, Karlsruhe, Bremen, Oxford, London and New York. [24] In 2009 and 2010, Kubisch participated in two separate residency programmes, the first in Copenhagen with the DIVA (Danish International Visiting Artists) Exchange Program and the second in Douala, Cameroon at Doual'art. [25]
