Christina Kubisch (* 1948) studied painting at the Stuttgart Academy of Fine Arts (1967?8), after which she attended the music academies in Hamburg, Graz and Zurich (1969?74) as well as Milan Conservatory (1974?6). After teaching for many years she was appointed professor of sculpture and audio-visual art at the Saar Academy of Fine Arts (1994). She received the honorary award from the German Klangkunst Prize in 2008. Today she lives in Berlin. ? www.christinakubisch.de

'What I like best are the twilight times of dawn and dusk ? the "interim periods" that seem so timeless that anything can become possible.'

(Christina Kubisch)

In the 1970s Kubisch composed pieces that not only critiqued traditional modes of musical performance but created entirely new sounds or interactions. One such piece was Identikit (1974), a divertimento for five pianists and pre-recorded tape in which pre-set rhythms were conveyed separately via headphones to the pianists seated at a piano. The acoustical performance instruction and the 'isolation' of the players formed the preconditions for their joint performance. In Emergency Solos (1975) Kubisch played the flute and other instruments with boxing gloves, gas mask and thimbles. Concert tours, artistic friendships and a meeting with John Cage formed way-stations on a career that soon transcended the boundary between music and the visual arts. At the latest it was Fabricio Plessi's video performances (1974-80) that induced her to attempt another level of musical 'abstraction', an open-ended experiment with concrete material. Form, colour and light, sound, space and time: all these parameters had to be redefined. Kubisch withdrew from the performance arena and focused her work on the sensory faculties of the listener and observer. To implement her artistic ideas, she became familiar with the latest advances in technology and studied electronics at Milan Institute of Technology. Around 1980 she began to create her first sound-art pieces, sound-sculptures, light spaces and electronic compositions. more