Two Mechanical Symphonies for Two Cities: New York New York Sinfonia Torinese

April 21 - June 23, 2006

The Christine Burgin Gallery is pleased to announce the opening on April 21 of an exhibition of new work by Paul Etienne Lincoln entitled Two Mechanical Symphonies for Two Cities.. The exhibition will include elements from two of Lincoln's large scale works — “New York New York,” 1986 - 2006 and “Sinfonia Torinese,” 2005 — as well as recently published editions related to these projects. Lincoln began work on “New York New York” in 1986. Although it is now nearing completion and has been exhibited at the Hamburger Banhof, Berlin and the Museum Folkwang, Essen, it has never been performed. The work, as it is designed, would perform in tunnels under New York City, over a 60-hour work week, a musical portrait of the city and it's role as the capital of industry, commerce and invention in the 20th century. It would, simultaneously, produce ice bonds and a steam organ rendition of John Philip Sousa's “Stars and Stripes Forever.”

In this exhibition the 48 records, which serve to produce the electrical charges necessary to power “New York New York” will be on display. These records or “Influence Isolators” as Lincoln calls them, contain recordings of sounds that have been lost from New York. There are four categories of lost sounds, one for each of the four generators needed to run “New York New York.” Each category is made up of sets of High and Low discs, spanning a period of New York's auditory history from 1920-1980. The first category uses popular songs about the city evoking areas of human endeavour, such as Manhattan's architecture, but also descriptions of the city's inhabitants and their lives. The second category uses Industrial (Low) and Natural (High) sounds. The third category uses Historic voice divulging descriptions of the city as recorded through the news, film poetry and political speeches to convey two distinct (High and Low) appreciations of the city, while the fourth documents the highest and the lowest vocal frequencies sung at the Metropolitan Opera for each year during this sixty year period. All recordings are mastered on the discs in chronological sequence and are indexed in a chart accompanying each category. During this exhibition, the records will be played sequentially on a sousaphonograph, the first of its kind, created especially for this exhibition.

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