Ari Benjamin Meyers

Ari Benjamin Meyers, Four Liverpool Musicians (Bette, Budgie, Ken, Louisa) (film still), 2018

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Ari Benjamin Meyers (b. 1972, New York, USA) lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Meyers received his training as a classical musician, composer and conductor at The Juilliard School, Yale University, and Peabody Institute. His works as an artist, such as Symphony 80 and Solo for Ayumi (both 2017), explore structures and processes in music composition and relationships between performer and audience. His diverse practice includes creating musical performances for the stage and exhibition spaces. He has collaborated with artists such as Tino Sehgal and Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster; bands including Einstürzende Neubauten and Chicks on Speed; and classical ensembles like the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble.

For the Biennial, Ari Benjamin Meyers has created a series of musical compositions that form the basis for film portraits of four musicians from Liverpool, or with musical ties to the city: Bette Bright (Deaf School), Budgie (Siouxsie and the Banshees/Big in Japan), Ken Owen (Carcass) and Louisa Roach (She Drew The Gun). The films reference the subjects’ personal histories and tell Liverpool’s musical history, representing its major musical movements while at the same time relating back to the city’s industrial past. This is the artist’s first film-based work and is presented on the stage of the Playhouse theatre. The four films are played back with varying amounts of overlap to create a meta-composition and a dialogue between the performers.

Recent works were shown at Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, Netherlands (2018), 14th Biennale de Lyon, France (2017); Spring Workshop, Hong Kong (2017); Lenbachhaus München, Munich, Germany (2017); Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany (2016); Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland (2016); and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany (2015). 

Ari Benjamin Meyers at Liverpool Biennial 2018

Four Liverpool Musicians (Bette, Budgie, Ken, Louisa), 2018
Three channel video, 52:10 min
Four original scores
Commissioned by Liverpool Biennial
Exhibited at the Playhouse theatre