Janet Cardiff’s The Forty Part Motet, November 14, 2015 – January 18, 2016

As Producer/Project Director, Marnie Burke de Guzman initiated plans to present the acclaimed media artist Janet Cardiff’s immersive and moving sound installation The Forty Part Motet in its California debut through a collaborative partnership between Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture (FMCAC) and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). The Forty Part Motet is Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture’s inaugural presentation in Gallery 308, a newly renovated historic space with sweeping views of San Francisco Bay, and SFMOMA’s final On the Go program before the museum’s new building opens in May of 2016.

A spatial reworking of sixteenth-century English composer Thomas Tallis’s transcendent Spem in Alium, The Forty Part Motet is widely considered one of Janet Cardiff’s most important pieces. Born in 1957 in the Canadian town of Brussels, Ontario, Janet Cardiff has made sound the chief focus of her practice, often layering video and installation elements in multimedia works that explore themes of desire, intimacy, loss, and memory. She currently lives in rural British Columbia, and works in collaboration with her husband and partner, George Bures Miller. Cardiff originally studied photography and print-making before experimenting with sound and moving image, and first gained distinction in the art world in the mid-1990s for her site-specific audio walks. Since then, she and Bures Miller have been internationally recognized for their immersive media works which have been exhibited around the globe.