TreeSpeedIsland

 
The Cologne-based musician and visual artist Andreas Hirsch, aka TreeSpeedMusic, brings to Watermill a peculiar instrument he has been developing: the Palmonica, an electrified palm tree leaf that produces sounds akin to the thumb piano’s. During his spring residency, Hirsch will collect sounds from the area surrounding Watermill and integrate them into a musical performance featuring his innovative instrument, contact and condenser microphones, effect pedals and other tools.

Andreas Hirsch, born in 1972, studied with Jürgen Klauke, a central figure in the field of performance photography. Hirsch favors a multi-disciplinary approach, moving between music, drawings, photography, and videos. In 1998, he performed Robin Page's Plant Piece at The Roxy in New York, for the opening gala show of Playing with Matches, by Al & Beck Hansen; the piece found Hirsch intimidating a plastic plant for 45 minutes. Since then, Hirsch has performed as TreeSpeedMusic.

Recently, Hirsch has been realizing a series entitled Psycho Flora, which consists of analog photographs and photograms of exotic plants in greenhouses and explores questions of nature and artificiality. Along with seven other Cologne-based artists, Hirsch ran Kunstraum BLAST, an independent project space designated to emerging artists. Hirsch’s exhibitions and performances include Palisadenparenchym (Danese/New York, NY and La Nuit Blanche/Paris, France) and Flexibiltätsversuche (Kunsthalle Fridericianum/Kassel, Germany and Schmidt & Handrup/Cologne, Germany).

Hirsch currently teaches as an assistant professor at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne.