LUXEMBOURG.- Workers in Song is the latest iteration of an ongoing collaborative project by composer Billy Bultheel (b. 1987, Brussels) and visual artist James Richards (b. 1983, Cardiff). Their immersive audiovisual installation and performance take visitors on a journey through a whirlwind of original material and citations, spanning the pleasures, underground films, and subcultures of bygone eras, as well as the darker dimensions of romantic subjectivity. At Mudam, Bultheel and Richards present a choreographed performance with live music and film on 28 March 2024, alongside an installation that probes the tension between liveness, sentimentality and desire in the absence of the living body.

Conceived as an open-ended, modular structure, Workers in Song operates as a constantly evolving organism which adapts to the specific context of each presentation – the present version is staged in an environment the artists specifically designed for the large curved space of Mudam’s West Gallery. Informed by the early days of cinema, when silent films were conceived to be presented with live music, and more contemporary forms including mixtapes or expanded cinema events, Bultheel and Richards present a dynamic musical score as a framework to bring their original material into dialogue with work by other artists – without subsuming any part into a uniform whole. Their own footage, taking viewers through nocturnal landscapes and dystopian brutalist interiors, is mixed with poems, films, and scores by other authors. The atmosphere of the installation is dark, although decisively rich, almost excessive. Many elements of the live event insistently return to the conflicts of human intimacy and the fraught boundaries between self and other. Nevertheless, the work’s episodic nature invites viewers to bring their own experiences to the table and connect the dots, allowing discrete elements to smudge and blur one’s perception.

James Richards (b. 1983, Cardiff) lives and works between Berlin and London. Richards’s expanded practice examines themes of obsession, desire, and technology through archival research, found footage, and extensive collaboration. Addressing the relentless flow of imagery in the twenty-first century, Richards’s work carves out a space where personal politics and digital materiality meet.

The artist’s recent solo exhibition projects include Internal Litter, Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin (2022); When We Were Monsters, Haus Mödrath, Kerpen (2021); Alms for the Birds, Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2020); SPEED 2, Malmö Konsthall (2019); and SPEED, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (2018). Selected group exhibitions include Penumbra, Fondazione In Between Art Film, Venice (2022); The Botanical Mind, Camden Art Centre, London (2020); the Whitney Biennial, New York (2017) and Less Than Zero, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2016). In 2017, Richards represented Wales at the 57th Venice Biennale with the exhibition Music for the Gift and was awarded the Preis der Nationalgalerie 2024 in Berlin.

Billy John Bultheel (b. 1987, Brussels) lives and works between Berlin and Brussels. Bultheel’s work as an experimental composer and performance artist bridges contemporary composition with techniques and traditions of European Medieval and Renaissance polyphonic music. His music explores performance and installations, often site-specific, leaving the constraints of the concert hall behind in order to find new territory for musical experiences. The musicians become performers, moving through sound tropes, interacting with architecture, sculpture, and custom- made instruments.

The artist’s recent projects include The Thief’s Journal, Berlin Atonal (2023); Workers in Song, WIELS, Brussels (2023); Mt. Analogue, Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, Paris (2023); Athens Songs I-IV, 7th Athens Biennial, Athens (2021); UNTER, Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin (2021); Songs for the Contract, folia.app (2021); The Minutes of Olomouc, PAF, Olomouc (2020) and When Doves Cry, Schinkel Pavillon Berlin, (2019). Bultheel studied composition at the Institute of Sonology in The Hague, The Netherlands and performance and choreography at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen, Germany.