ICH / 2006
more:
4 performers, 4 tables - facing the audience. Electronic sound makers, microphones,
paper, books, scores; wiring harnesses, technical cross linking, barely any
manipulation of light and nebula.
Music theatre as a statement and a test object - sound and voices form the
substance. The individual performers have unique techniques of approaching
this substance. They all interact with it in a unique way - including integration
and exclusion of the single aspects of the matter - so that their specific
contribution reflects the variability of the topic. This leads to a live
performance that contains
archive a-like structures which frame a net.
Writer John Birke writes standard text (monologues, sketches, lists, narrations).
These are seen and taken as a "quarry" that is mined and processed.
Sometimes, the text forms a unity with the performer - sometimes, performer
and text seem to reject each other. This results in a mutual influence of
the text to be spoken and the voice talents themselves. John Birke is involved
as a performer. He becomes a part of the working progress in the live performance
of the electronic music theatre.
Text and fragments are combined to become a "concert of voices",
following the
principals of composition and improvisation. The voice remains the stand-alone
instrument - electronically modified / as a sample / mutilated.
This results in a many-voiced production feeding on manipulation: manipulation
of the voice talents by the text, manipulation of the text by the voices,
and manipulation of the voices by electronic processing.
The joint work of a team which members represent different generations (born
between 1981 and 1962) and categories of art also implies different points
of view regarding the approach of the reference material and the self-image
of each individual performer. This synergetic and / or contrapuntal element
is reflected in the production itself; self-assertion and self-definition
of the participants draws the topical bow.
Objects of interest are the different views, life and production models of
the artists, which result from the specific periods of life.
"I / Me - Four Voices": Attempt of
a positioning on the basis of a text by Steffen Schmitt (Zurich)
Picture