DI UN SPIRITO SOTTILE The Perfection of One Slender Spirit – concert-installation to the score of Salvatore Sciarrinos piece (1985)
Displayed: 1. sequence – transition 2 (Lausitz)/video & lightboxes
Ice
2018, lightbox,
64,5 x 80 x 20cm
Queen/King
2018, lightbox,
64,5 x 80 x 20cm
Transition 2 (Lausitz)
filmstill, 1st sequence
AscheFeuer
filmstill, 2nd sequence
Quelle
filmstill, 3rd sequence
Displayed: 6. sequence – bells/video & lighboxes
Bells
filmstill, 6th sequence
1/8 |
with Rebecca Lane (flute), Olivia Stahn (soprano), Brigitte Haas/Sabrina Ma (percussion), Adam Asnan (Sound)
Conecept: Rebecca Lane & Uta Neumann
"The gods have died, and we no longer believe in magic. Yet we still recognize a certain mysterious solitude. Led by the wind, we can find something that links all these places, however diverse. A secret sign, one ideal for the theater: space manifesting itself in a pure state. And the visitor discovers a condition that is primary, contradictory, frightening. The loss of human dimensions." S. Sciarrino
A lament for a “non-optimistic nature…and our human vocation to self-destruction”1 Salvatore Sciarrino calls his ~45 minute work La perfezione di uno spirito sottile (Perfection of a subtle spirit) a musical ritual, suggesting it be performed outside, “…in the vicinity of precipices, cliffs, strange rock formations, or boundless upland plains.”2
As the starting point for this musical ritual, artist Uta Neumann chose to bring Lausitz – one of Germany’s largest open pit brown coal mining regions, lying 150 km from Berlin – as a speculative site into the concert space. At Lausitz, one can witness on a vast scale, man’s role as a geomorphological agent in the natural landscape, and in turn, nature’s weathering of these colossal artificial forms.
Neumann and sound artist Adam Asnan awaken the audible and visual echoes of this bleak and mountainous moonscape through large-format video projection and quadraphonic field recordings. Photographic light boxes on the periphery of the space illuminate potential ritualistic objects that refer to the five elements, Neumann taking a cue from the vocal part – “Who are you? Where do you come from?” – whose urgent, drawn-out mantric fragments pose the question of the origin of things.
Among these objects, flutist Rebecca Lane and soprano Olivia Stahn face each other as otherworldly figures, and the musical work of La perfezione di uno spirito sottile unfolds. The flute’s barely audible wind, whistling and moaning sounds – growing to melodic fragments, and animalistic growls and screams – are in dialogue with the soprano’s repetitive sighing gestures, which tell of burning with thirst and dying. The trio is completed by percussionist Sabrina Ma playing fourteen bells, filling the air with a spectral downpour, which is carried away by the wind.
1/8 |
Displayed: 1. sequence – transition 2 (Lausitz)/video & lightboxes,
Schinkelsaal, Gesellschaftshaus, Magdeburg, festival Ambitus, September, 2018
Ice, 2018, lightbox,
64,5 x 80 x 20cm
Queen/King, 2018, lightbox,
64,5 x 80 x 20cm
Transition 2 (Lausitz), filmstill, 1st sequence
AscheFeuer, filmstill, 2nd sequence
Quelle, filmstill, 3rd sequence
Displayed: 6. sequence – bells/video & lighboxes,
Schinkelsaal, Gesellschaftshaus, Magdeburg, Festival Ambitus, September, 2018
Bells, filmstill, 6th sequence