Ari Benjamin Meyers The Art (Zurich), 2016

Ari Benjamin Meyers has created a temporary rock band. The name of this band is The Art.
This work consists of the annotated songbook with 10 original scores by Ari Benjamin Meyers for voice, electric guitar, electric bass and drums; signed and framed contractual band agreement; 4 white pre-worn costumes; full set of 21 individual band t-shirts created in the context of the first presentation in Zurich.

Playing in situ all day the band performed over five weeks of his exhibition's duration. The Art was defined by a particular length of time in a particular space. A manufactured group, its members were art school students who had responded to an advert by the artist that very precisely sets out the terms of its existence. Everything The Art does will take place in one setting: from first coming together as a band, progressing through first rehearsals to well-practiced group, before finally — and as is contractually inevitable — breaking up.

Just as the band is the creation of Meyers, so too is the score that The Art will play. The artist has composed a collection of verses, choruses and bridges that will form the basis of The Art's repertoire, complex enough for the band to inhabit over their sustained performance, yet deliberately kept open enough to allow improvisation and freedom of interpretation. An artist educated as a conductor and composer, Meyers' work traverses these categories, dissolving the distinctions between art and music, rehearsal and performance. Although he was classically trained, he has played in and worked with a number of bands including Einstürzende Neubauten, The Orb, The Residents, Celan and most recently Chicks on Speed.

The band The Art will leave behind not a fixed musical record, but a legacy made of memories and the stories that circulate its short existence. This ephemeral residue will be enhanced by more physical remains including band merchandise, a fanzine, and a score that, after the band itself is no more, may yet give rise to new iterations of The Art.

The artist has invited Kathi Glas and Kai Knappe of Georgie+Timmy Studio to design the costumes and merchandise and John Holten, author and editor in chief of Broken Dimanche Press, to write scenarios and liner notes that accompany each song.