K Club, 2019
Performance, environment, neon sign, 2 12-inch LP vinyl records
Installation dimensions variable
Neon sign: 106 x 97 x 8 cm
Edition of 3

It is not so much about the performance in and of itself or even the idea that we perform something for others, but much more the space that's opened up by this intersection between audience, musician, and music.

— Ari Benjamin Meyers

K Club is a musical situation staged for one visitor only at a time. A neon sign marks the entrance to a dance club, the exhibition space is designed accordingly. The music track was composed by Ari Benjamin Meyers with Canadian electronica musician Deadbeat and takes the visitor on a condensed journey through an entire night out clubbing. By mixing two vinyl records of the same track, a unique score for each visitor is created live by the DJ. An important aspect of the work is the situation of waiting: visitors are randomly assigned a number; only if their number is called by the bouncer are they allowed in.

— Jörn Schafaff (Tacet in Concert, Corraini Edizioni, 2019, p. 6)

Although we're talking about social distancing and this performance seems to fit perfectly with the new hygiene regulations, it's actually more about the coming together of two people than it is about being apart.

— Ari Benjamin Meyers

K Club: Reconstructing the Club
Performance by Ari Benjamin Meyers with Violet, DJ Tennis
Tejo Power Station
MAAT – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology
Lisbon
October 5, 2021, 11 am – 8 pm
www.maat.pt

On October 5th, the MAAT celebrates its fifth anniversary. On occasion of this celebration, Ari Benjamin Meyers will present a special iteration of K Club with two Lisbon-based DJs, Violet and DJ Tennis. The presentation is part of a day-long program of special events, an outdoor market in the gardens of the Tejo Power Station, and free entrance to both buildings, MAAT and Central.

Ari Benjamin Meyers
K Club, 2019
Vinyl record
Duration: 8:38 min
31,4 x 31,4 cm (sleeve)
Edition of 40
Signed and numbered

Further Information

Listen to an excerpt of K Club here

Ari Benjamin Meyers
The Long Parade
Beaufort 21
Various locations, Flanders
Through October 17, 2021
www.beaufort21.be

Final Date: October 17: Knokke - Koninklijke Harmonie Sint-Cecilia Heist

Part of the seventh edition of the Beaufort Triennial, Beaufort 21, The Long Parade, presented by Ari Benjamin Meyers, in collaboration with the walking orchestra "Die Verdammte Spielerei," will have its final performance on October 17th.

The Long Parade is a music-based durational performance inspired by the brutal history of the Belgian coast, memory and forgetting, and the children’s game "Telephone". Over the course of the summer, the Flemish fanfare band "Die Verdammte Spielerei" marched from the French-Belgian border in De Panne to the Belgian-Dutch border of Knokke, performing a new composition by Ari Benjamin Meyers over ten musical parades. For each performance, they were joined by a different local group of musicians that made their own adaptations of the piece and, in a ritualized manner, passed the music — and a specially commissioned flag — from one municipality to the next. This performance, in essence an evolving, moving rehearsal, continued throughout the summer months, undergoing further mutations. The final performance, and thus its finale, will take place in Knokke-Heist on October 17th.

With The Long Parade Meyers unites the identities and histories of the Belgian coastal municipalities in one new composition that, in getting adapted by all, celebrates collaboration and recognizes the individuality of each place, while at the same time highlighting the fog of memory as it pertains to the past – both recent and more distant.

Participation is free and open to the public.

Süddeutsche Zeitung
Party For One
By Stefan Sommer
Read here (DE)

"Learned behavior and learned pleasure are dissected into their component parts by "K Club", which at its climax recalls the euphoria of danced-through club nights, which nowadays seems far away: what remains of the rave, of the united frenzy, of the collective love frenzy is a tête-à-tête at a distance."

– Stefan Sommer on K Club at Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau, Munich, Süddeutsche Zeitung, October 2021