Sound installation for 10 percussionists, voice, video, human and non-human triggers
November 02nd 2019, 12:00 - 3:30 pm
Brigittenauer Bridge, Vienna
Commission for composition: Wien Modern
Since the beginning of the 21st century, construction and production processes have annually shifted more rock material than rivers, erosion and other non-human processes put together. A part of humanity is thus becoming a geological factor whose effects are deeply inscribed in the materiality of the earth. For MODIFIED GROUNDS, this strongly transforming and newly stratified surface of the earth is read in several translation steps as musical score and performed as a sound installation. In a joint, interdisciplinary work process between the visual artist Katrin Hornek and the composer Judith Unterpertinger, data of different material flows are researched, deconstructed and interpreted in cooperation with partners and scientists from different fields.
The project MODIFIED GROUNDS wants to trace the abstract space of capital-driven material displacement as a resonating body by performing a developed score live at strategically and content-wise selected locations. MODIFIED GROUNDS #1, Formwork was realized in 2018 at the Doka-factory in Amstetten, one of the largest concrete formwork companies in the world. MODIFIED GROUNDS #2, Concrete Voids takes place inside the Brigittenauer Bridge, which spans the Danube and rests with one bridge leg on Vienna"s largest structure - the Danube Island. MODIFIED GROUNDS #3 will be realized at a place of material mining, probably in a cement quarry.
Idea, concept, video, dramaturgy, artistic direction: Katrin Hornek
Concept, composition, dramaturgy, musical direction: Judith Unterpertinger
Drums, percussion, metal objects: Bernhard Breuer, Richard Eigner, Elisabeth Flunger, Slobodan Kajkut, Didi Kern, Michael Kinn, Joachim Murnig, Ingrid Oberkanins, David Schweighart, Berndt Thurner
Performance: Sabina Holzer, Brigitte Wilfing
Tecnical support: Karl Salzmann
Production: Petra Torky, Jakob Schweighofer, Christian Sundl
With many thanks to MA29 Wiener Brückenbau und Grundbau, especially to Luise Gruber, Dirk Neuburg, Hermann Papouschek, Juliana Reimoser and Werner Rosenbusch
Production Wien Modern
supported by: bka, MA7, wwtf