[ german ]

With Terry Fox the artworld has lost one its best. Although his voice has not faded with his passing.

I have been fortunate enough to have worked with Terry three times since 1996. A fourth project, already underway, is to remain unfinished due to Terry Fox' death. It was to be a special and very personal filmed tribute to the artist and the man, directed by the Austrian filmmaker Sabine Groschup.

Terry Fox's legacy to Vienna, a city with a place in his heart since the end of the 1970s although he did not revisit for over thirty years, is his eight-channel soundtrack entitled 'Acousticks'.
For this sound work Terry Fox employed a historical metronome for the first time not to set the tact but as an instrument. While he was working on the piece he learned that a prototype of the metronome was built and patented in Vienna by Johann Nepomuk Mälzel, back in 1816. This coincidence was a source of particular pleasure to Terry Fox.
A beautiful form of notation was developed for 'Acousticks' using a series of musicological terms covering the temporal aspects of music, from largo (40 beats per minute) to prestissimo (208 beats per minute). This notation adorns the poster for TONSPUR 23 by Terry Fox.

'Acousticks' was produced in February 2008, during a month he enjoyed tremendously as TONSPUR Artist in Residence at quartier21 in the Museumsquartier Wien, where he was joined by his wife, the filmmaker and writer Marita Loosen.

The world premier of the extremely intense sounding TONSPUR 23 was held on 24.2.08 in the TONSPUR_passage in the MQ Wien. 'Acousticks' could then be heard daily from 10am – 8pm at the same venue until 31.5.08.

A personal note: 23 is my favourite number, and so for TONSPUR 23 I wanted to invite an artist whose work with sound I find particularly impressive.
It could only be Terry Fox.

Having started as a painter, Terry Fox found his spiritual and creative home in the European Fluxus movement, and especially in the context of performance and Happenings.
Early Body Art would be unthinkable without Terry Fox, he was also one of the pioneering forces behind contemporary sound art, and so for the contemporary understanding of sound as a raw material in the Fine Arts.
Highly valued by his colleagues, curators, mediators and theorists alike, in the course of over four decades Terry Fox was also always an inspiration and an icon for subsequent generations.

Terry Fox was impressive in every way: his thinking, his actions and his production.
He will last in the collective memory of all who see art as a decisive ingredient for a richer life. He was enormously adaptable, occasionally radical, frequently silent, and deeply expert at making art that was always blessed with poetic wealth, an art that was his life.

His artistic impact and oeuvre earns the greatest of respect and appreciation as a lifelong achievement. A great and comprehensive body of work that has now become his legacy, following his death, bears testimony to this. It must not be forgotten, and it is our task to ensure that it this does not happen.

It is all too often too soon when people leave us — as did Terry Fox. He was only 65. Although things were a little different for Terry Alan Fox:
Born as an American in Seattle, Washington State, he was still young when he emigrated to Europe, where illness and associated physical challenges accompanied him for much of his life. That he still reached the age of 65 is a miracle for many who knew him or worked with him, and were privileged enough to experience his presence. Terry Fox himself even expressed his own astonishment on many occasions.

Against all the odds, Terry Fox never stopped working. He understood how to adjust to his 'possibilities' as well as 'impossibilities. And so the 'known' and 'unknown' factors directly or indirectly became a part of his work. Presumably, because this work, complete with the necessity and directness of its production, approaches us so personally and intensely.

"Dear Terry: Your work now substitutes your voice. Through this great body of work your voice will never fade among those who want to hear it and can!"
"This is how you intended it to be, and so it is."
Thank you for that."

Epilogue
I heard that Terry wanted a tree.
I am sure that everybody who knew Terry, and treasured and loved him, would want this tree to survive as many storms as possible, like Terry, frequently fascinating passing strollers on their way from here to there with its form, its colours, its fruit and seeds, and its own unique magic — just like the great and impassioned artist and wonderful human being Terry Fox.

[Translation: Jonathan Quinn]

Georg Weckwerth is artist, curator and artistic director of TONSPUR in the Museumsquartier Vienna