Will It Be a Likeness?

On Thursday, 2 July 2015 at 9 p.m., HangarBicocca presents Will It Be a Likeness? (1996), the most complex of all Juan Muñoz‘s sound works. Composed together with John Berger, one of Britain’s most illustrious writers and art critics, Will It Be a Likeness? unfolds as though it were an imaginary radio broadcast, with the presence of John Berger himself, a foley artist, an interpreter, a magician and three women.
In a light-hearted and paradoxical manner, the work illustrates Juan Muñoz’s fascination for magic tricks and for the inherent ambiguities in written and spoken texts: the noises created by the foley artist immediately reveal their illusory nature.
The voice of the narrator, John Berger, is drowned out by that of the interpreter, while the magician, in a manner that apparently has nothing to do with what is going on, makes the three women disappear. In Will It Be a Likeness? every visual or sound effect helps thwart any form of logical comprehension, and yet the audience is as though hypnotised by a series of mental and perceptive illusions.

Photo: Wonge Bergmann, Frankfurt, 1996