Introduction: 18:45
Artist talk: 20:30

Vox ex nihilo

Performance (2020–22)

with works by Mattia Bonafini, Rainer Rubbert and Alexandra Filonenko

Artistic direction and singing: Viktoriia Vitrenko
Performance: Sabine Scherbel
Director: Jasmin Schädler
Libretto: Jasmin Schädler, Tanja Langer
Choreography: Sophie Gisbertz
Composition: Mattia Bonafini, Rainer Rubbert, Alexandra Filonenko
Sound direction: Ui-Kyung Lee
Stage design: Susanne Brendel
Lighting design: Alexander Joseph
Costume design: Laura Yoro
Make-up: Sangyeon Lee
Sign language interpreters: Hannah Häberle, Tanja Lilienblum-Steck
Project management: Sophie Gisbertz

This inclusive music, theater and dance performance explores the meaning of the voice from social, political and cultural perspectives and questions its current role in society. »Vox ex nihilo« aims to make as many different voices as possible heard–from deaf people to refugees from Ukraine.

Rachel C. Walker: مَا انفَكَّ يَنْدِف

And keeps on falling

for ensemble (2023) ^WP

Tianyang Zhang: Mo I

for trumpet, trombone, violoncello and electric guitar (2023) ^WP

Neil Luck: Five English Folk Songs

Performance mit Schlagzeug und Klavier (2023) ^WP

Stefan Litwin: Huakajchi

for piano solo (2023) ^WP

José Luis Perdigón: exiled in a pot

for ensemble (2023) ^WP

Beltrán González: inhabited by a cry

for trumpet, trombone, violoncello and electric guitar (2023) ^WP

Neil Luck und Mimi Doulton, Vocals

Florian Hölscher, Klavier

Ensemble Ascolta

For Five English Folk Songs, Neil and Mimi explored magical forms of non-human communication among flora, fauna, gods, the dead and the quasi-dead. Stefan Litwin concludes the program with the story of a great Latin American silver mine. Framed by these two image-rich solo pieces, four chamber works unfold with the ever-curious Ensemble Ascolta.

Philipp Krebs: inherence
for KORG MS20, electric guitar, electric drums, synthesizer & electronics (2023)

Yiran Zhao: negative space A
for electric guitar, electric drums, synthesizer & video (2021)

Malte Giesen: stock footage piece 3–dubai bling luxury billionaire lifestyle
for electric guitar, electric drums, synthesizer & video (2023) ^WP

Pony Says

Lucas Gerin, percussion

Felix Nagl, piano

Thilo Ruck, guitar

The raw analog sounds of the KORG MS20, one of the iconic synthesizers of the 70s, meet in inherence with the digital-electronic sound of Pony Says. With a Yiran Zhao uses a common technique of classical Chinese art, the »empty space«, to create a new perception of musical material. Malte Giesen, on the other hand, takes apart the sound of hyper-materialism found in the cities of the Arab Emirates that have sprung up, attracting influencer fortune seekers, mindset business coaches and the digital nouveau-riche, and performs it ad absurdum. »TEMPLATES« are three approaches to sonic or visual (pop)cultural material.

BALKAN AFFAIRS

Hanan Hadžajlić: Requiem Ex Machina

for six amplified voices (2022/23) ^GP

Jug Marković: NULA Music

for six voices (2022) ^GP

Ana Pandevska: Electroacoustic mantra From Ex YU to EU

for soprano, mezzo soprano and fixed media (2023) ^GP

Nina Perović: Penetrations III

for six vocals and electronics (2022/23) ^GP

Petra Strahovnik: SCREAdoM

for five voices, sound installation and electronics (2023) ^GP

Helena Skljarov: The Blue Giraffe

for five voices, electronics, and video (2023) ^GP

Neue Vocalsolisten

Six composers from the six republics of the former Yugoslavia have dealt with the effects of the Balkan wars, which continue to shape the societies of their home countries to this day–and which are once again coming depressingly close to European consciousness. With different approaches to the subject matter, they unfold darkly grotesque scenarios: a clash of the most diverse prayer practices, an ironic commentary on the exorbitant inflation in disintegrating Yugoslavia, a mantra-like invocation of future happiness in the bosom of the EU, an impressive recreation of physical and psychological violence, and an illusionless fairy tale about dominance and demarcation. With the encounter of vocal art and experimental electronics, the six artists succeed in making a strong, sound-intensive, gripping statement.

»Voice. Fountain of memory. Kyiv-Charkiv-Odessa-Lviv«

On a long journey through Ukraine in 2018, Russian composer-performer Natalia Pschenitschnikova collected sound recordings of elderly women. Their voices were to become part of a large, almost »liturgical anti-war project«. At the beginning of her conversations, she always posed the question of the first sound memories–often a key to the most diverse, sometimes hidden or repressed memories.

In images, sounds, and text quotations, the artist creates an impressive course between installation and performance in the bunker at Diakonissenplatz in Stuttgart. The audience is immersed in a universe of post-Soviet experiences, observing, listening, reading in with their own empathy and individual sense of time.

Natalia Pschenitschnikova recommends a dwell time of about 45 to 75 minutes.

The 2018 Ukraine trip was sponsored by the Trust for Mutual Understanding with support from Summa Artium.

The New Renaissance 2.0 ^UA

Mixed Sound Personnel

Viktoriia Vitrenko & Lucas Gerin: performance and artistic direction

Mu Wang: direction and dramaturgy

feat. current fellows and alumni of Akademie Schloss Solitude

The increasing presence of digital technologies in our everyday lives is not only changing our perception of the world, but also »our genetic code, challenging us to redefine our role as biological individuals, our identity and our interpersonal communication«–so the thesis of Mixed Sound Personnel.

Combining contemporary music with poetry, scientific texts, video art and generative video mapping, the music theater performance revolves around the transhumanism-influenced question of what defines us as human beings today.