Dani Gal | Historical Records

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Dani Gal, “Historical Records, part 2 of 3,” 2016-2017

install view at private office New York City (courtesy of the Gallery)

Dani Gal’s epic work, Historical Records (2005-ongoing) comprises over 700 commercially issued vinyl LPs, which the artist has collected since the beginning of this century. As the collection grew over the years, it was divided into three parts and The Polygon Gallery is showing Part 1, 2005-2018 (comprised of 246 records), from the Collection of Migros Museum in Zürich, in its ground floor gallery. This poignantly plural work becomes the centrepiece of Dani Gal’s first solo exhibition in Canada.

Installed in a dense grid on a wall, the array of LP covers can be understood visually as an alternative ‘history painting’; albeit one that refuses to serve a dominant narrative. Bracketed in time by the invention of the phonograph (1877) and the Fall of the Berlin Wall (1989), Gal’s rich collection of sound recordings, chronicles “speeches and interviews of those who were in power, others who objected to this power, of war and peace agreements, human rights struggles, and other radio broadcasts of the events that shaped history.” Focusing on Gal’s engagement with sound as subject and material, the exhibition includes a listening station with access to his recent works for radio, the full sonic archive of Historical Records, as well as the artist’s eponymous book (published with Snoeck in 2018), a sumptuous compilation of his in-depth research into an almost disappeared phenomenon of sound documents – also available at The Diane Evans Bookstore.

During the course of the exhibition, public programs will activate the immense potential of the work as a ground for critical historical reflection and collective imagining of political and sonic futures: dialogues, tours, and radio broadcasts as well as a sound performance. For the opening on Saturday March 9, Gal himself performs Semi-Automatic: The Swamp in June, using his evolving system for putting different sound sources – such as live radio, field recordings (including samples from the Historical Records collection) and acoustic instruments outfitted with specially made motors – in dialogue. Nodding to the vanguard tradition of musique concrète , Gal turns speech into music and vice-versa, inviting listeners to consider anew the full substance of the histories that shape us.