Opening When Elephants Come Marching In

The exhibition When elephants come marching in: Echoes of the Sixties in Today’s Art explores the tumultuous 1960s, aware or intuitive, return in the contemporary art. Gastcurator Mark Kremer selected work form fourteen artist, where diverse ideas and experiences of the sixties resonate.

Free entrance

During the opening of the exhibition When Elephants Come Marching in, in de Appel arts centre, German Popov (USSR,1966) wil do a musical performance. Born in 1966 in the port city of Odessa, USSR, studies at the Academy of Radio Communication in Odessa. German Popov is a composer, an active practitioner of contemporary music who plays various instruments and who works with electronic music, and he is also a fervent student of and strong advocator for traditional music from Central Asia.

In 1989 he moved to Amsterdam and started combining traditional sounds from the East with electronic music, working as sound artist, musician and composer. Throughout his career he collaborated with many musicians and artists mainly from Central Asia Sainkho, Huun Huur Tuu, Samo, Mezrep, Almagul Menlibayeva a.o.). He has written music for films and theatre plays and participated in ethnographical researches & expeditions. On the German label Essay Recordings, under the name OMFO, he released several albums incl. the acclaimed “Trans Balkan Express”, “We are the Shepherds” and “Omnipresence”.

Years of travelling far and wide, making hundreds of field recordings, dwelling in ancient musical cultures, and learning to play exotic instruments, have culminated in present day electro-acoustic experiments introducing western audiences to what he regards as the “intrinsic modernism of the Orient”.

So welcome to electronic Walachia, where folk meets Kraftwerk and where bizarre instruments and electronic sounds combine to create a whole new musical dimension.

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