grazerkunstverein

(Concert)

Partingggg Schlingingggg

Charlemagne Palestine

13/12/2025, 19:00, Herz-Jesu-Kirche, Graz

Charlemagne Palestine will perform Partingggg Schlingingggg, a church-organ improvisation within Schlingen Blängen, the long-form improvisation cycle he has developed since the 1970s. Over the decades, each iteration has redefined its language through extended duration, vibrating intensities, and the steady accumulation of tonal fields.

Conceived for Tom Engels’s farewell as Artistic Director of the Grazer Kunstverein, Partingggg Schlingingggg turns Palestine’s sound world toward a moment of transition, inviting those present into a shared interval of listening—for one more time.

The performance takes place in the Herz-Jesu-Kirche (Sparbersbachgasse 58, Graz). Visitors are advised to dress warmly. The concert is open to all, with free admission.









CHARLEMAGNE PALESTINE (b. 1947, Brooklyn, NYC) is a sound artist, composer, performer, and video and installation artist based in Brussels. A contemporary of Philip Glass, Terry Riley, Phill Niblock, and Tony Conrad, Palestine has been creating intense, ritualistic, continuum music for electronic sound sources, bell carillons, pipe organs, pianos, voice, and other keyboard instruments since the 1960s. Originally trained as a cantor and later a carillonneur, he is a composer-performer who always performs his own works as a soloist. Among his first key works are his electronic continuums and his sonority explorations, referred to as Golden Sonorities. Other notable works include his continuum form Strumming Music, the two-hour sound performance Karenina, and Schlingen Blängen, a sonic continuum form for pipe organs that he has been continuously developing since the 1970s. Palestine stopped performing in the early 1980s and until the mid-1990s, devoting himself entirely to creating plush animal divinity altars as multi-media sculptures and installations. These altars are often an integral part of his performances. Since his return to performing, Palestine has reissued works from the 1960s and 1970s on CD and vinyl and has performed and exhibited internationally. Notable recent performances include illlummminnnatttionnnsssss!!!!!!! with Simone Forti at MoMA, New York City, and The Louvre, Paris (2014); STTT THOMASSS ‘’’’”‘”DINGGGDONGGGDINGGGzzzzzzz ferrrr TONYYY’’’’’’’ , organized with Blank Forms and performed at St. Thomas Episcopal Church, New York City (2017); as well as his participation in the 2014 Whitney Biennial, presenting Stairway Song, a site-specific twelve-channel sound installation. Exhibitions focusing on his sculptural and musical work include Voodooo at WIELS, Brussels (2010); GesammttkkunnsttMeshuggahhLaandtttt at Kunsthalle Wien (2015) and Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam (2016); Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo at Meredith Rosen Gallery, New York City (2023); and Post Scriptum: A museum forgotten by heart at MACRO, Rome (2024).

01Charlemagne Palestine, Sacred Ooooo !!!, 1997. Courtesy of the artist.