May news

On it goes in my organ cosmos. Sound research and composing for my new Solo record. May also brings the Radio Play Days, in Krems. This is a traditional three-day conference about the art of radio play making. Many authors, directors and editors from the German-language radio landscape are invited by a team of the austrian radio. This year I am invited with the following pieces: Herzbefellt, ein Nachrufen by author Frieda Paris and an excerpt of the text There/Hier Dort by artist Etel Adnan. I am working on the latter with the dramaturge Klaudia Ruschkowski for the FFT Theatre in Düsseldorf as a musical literary performance. We turn it into a dialogue between an actress (Veronika Bachfischer, Schaubühne Berlin) and a pianist. Veronika and myself are starting the rehearsal process and the preproduction. Adnan’s text is a meditation on conflicts, a highly topical stream of thoughts, although it had been written in 1997, as a reaction to the war in former Yugoslavia. The premiere is on 21 June 2023.

„There is a prose poem by the Lebanese-American poet, philosopher and painter Etel Adnan (1925-2021). Written in 1997, during the war in Yugoslavia, it deals with conflicts between individuals, societies and the sexes: „If you have an enemy, and you are completely obsessed with him, this enemy will occupy your head. He becomes you. This is a difficult situation. There are victories in history that are worse than defeats.“ The musician and composer Ulrike Haage transforms Etel Adnan’s poem into an open musical-sound fabric in the back and forth of thinking and speaking, live „on, in and under“ the grand piano and in dialogue with the actress Veronika Bachfischer. In the context of the first comprehensive monographic exhibition of Etel Adnan’s work in Germany at the Kunstsammlung NRW.“  (Press text, Freies Forum Theatre Düsseldorf)