On the Edge
ISMN : 979-0-2325-7870-5
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"On the Edge," for six soloists, choir, and electronics, touches the boundaries between virtual and real spaces, between imagined and embodied voices, and between reality and mental illness. The audience is guided through a sonic journey, inspired by stories of women bound to live at the edge of society. This journey begins with lullabies from European countries, collected during workshops organised by HowNow, with women living in shelters in the Parisian area, who are fighting their way back to a more stable life. During these meetings, it became clear that, due to the traumatic nature of their experiences, some stories were unable to be told, and it was not for me to tell them but, rather, to connect with them on a deeper level. Therefore I selected some early poems by Mina Loy (1882–1966), a controversial and marginalized artist of the past century, whose life was marked by unconventional and nomadic living. Some of her "Songs to Johannes" (1917) seem to anticipate her later inspiration from fringe figures of society, individuals who sidestep the existential search for meaning, hoping to glimpse some sort of revelation from their various quests—a revelation that fails to arrive.
The journey unfolds by questioning the perception of reality, a dramatic state that arises when dealing with altered mental states. But it also allows us to understand the dramaturgy composed for the spaces involved in the staging: according to where we are, one can perceive two separate spaces interconnected through an invisible network, one virtual and the other embodied. In this sense, the loudspeaker and the electronic device provide an intuition of the virtual space. A long prelude prepares for the moment of revelation when the two spaces become one. However, one soon learns that it also contains within itself a multitude of forms, spaces, and faces, like a perpetually shifting polyhedron.
On the centenary of Luigi Nono, whose works were often premiered by the SWR Vokalensemble and the SWR Experimentalstudio, it seems impossible not to think of his "Prometeo," for which the architect Renzo Piano designed and built a wooden ark, with three levels of balconies where the performers were placed, completely enveloping the audience and allowing the spatialization of the archipelago of sounds, characteristic of Nono's later works. Although far less grandiose, the spatialization device of "On the Edge" is equally ambitious and rests on the extensive expertise of the SWR Experimentalstudio in this domain.
"On the Edge" was composed after–and thanks to–a long-lasting exchange with the SWR Vokalensemble and their conductor Yuval Wajnberg, and reflects the common wish to explore unconventional concert forms, to bring some indeterminate elements into play, and to engage the public on a different level of perception.
The continuous collaboration with all parties involved—the technical teams, singers, artistic director, conductor, managers—make this work the result of an incredible collective effort, alongside the Donaueschinger Musiktage.
Fixed electronics
Real-time electronics
Choir
Voices (6)
Pages - 86
