Meredith Monk was just 22 when she shook up the New York scene with her happenings, an artist who broke all boundaries, who irritated, fascinated, and inspired. Primarily with her voice, a voice that’s able to do everything, it coos, screeches, whispers, overtones, voice box tones...she can also yodel, she assures a visibly relieved, but otherwise totally unsettled, presenter in a TV interview. The critics had a hard time with this exceptional artist, crazy was the friendliest thing they wrote about her. They kept a distance, also in 1969 at the first big performance “Juice” for 75 voices, 45 harps, and a horse in the spiral of the Guggenheim Museum.

MONK IN PIECES celebrates the great Meredith Monk, invites us to her loft in Manhattan, still from the 70s, with the bathtub in the middle of the kitchen. We’re there when she improvises on the piano, and also when she talks to her turtle (“my little girl“). Monk laughingly describes this very worthwhile documentary by Billy Shebar as a “eulogy to an old woman negotiating with death.” The film is an opportunity to catch up on what you’ve missed, at least in parts, with snippets from her most important work: for example the immigrant poem “Ellis Island,” the Holocaust opera “Quarry,” the Stuttgart concert with Björk – the singer is one of many for whom Monk became central to their artistic development. Monk received the 1975 Golden Lion at the Art Biennale Venice for the feminist performance “Education of the Girlchild.” This autumn, at the Music Biennale, she, now 82 years old – no, not old – will receive another Golden Lion, one for her entire life’s work.

Elisabeth Bauschmid (INDIEKINO MAGAZIN)

Translation: Elinor Lewy