Questions and fragments

"I take one step to the right and one step diagonally forward. I now stand six steps vertically away from my starting position. I breathe - and play a trill." In Brigitta Muntendorf's Screen Sharing. Come into my inhabitable world Rümlingen 2017 comes to the fore in condensed form. On the one hand, the saxophonist moving to the words underlines the motto "17 läuft. Music in motion". On the other hand, his isolated solo trills point to a thinning out of the program. The budget was obviously much smaller than in previous years. The result: only two major productions in the form of Muntendorf's Screen Sharing and Penelope Wehrli's Eadweard's rafta kind of performance that goes by the name of "Interface for dancers, composers and musicians".

You have to know: The play's namesake, Eadweard Muybridge, caused a sensation in the late 19th century with his chronophotographic studies of movement. In the style of a flip-book, he lined up photographs in such a way that it was possible to analyze a horse's gallop, for example. Penelope Wehrli, the Zurich-born stage designer and performance artist, is now updating Muybridge's ideas in Rümlingen: She is equipping dancers with movement sensors. Their reduced shrugs and snake-like undulations are fed into a computer, which instantly calculates a graphic and traditional notation for two accordion players.

The concept is obvious. Here, the dancers do not react to the music, but the music reacts to the dancers, who in turn - in a kind of perpetual motion machine - respond to the accordion notes. What is fascinating in the first few minutes soon reveals its weaknesses. Time delays are not the main problem. But in the long run, both the fragmentary interjections of the musicians and the dance movements become all too monotonous. A differentiation of the computer algorithms could perhaps solve the problem. A more multi-layered structure for this dance performance might also be conceivable. In Rümlingen, it remains a somewhat bland performance, but one that could, perhaps should, motivate us to think further.
 

Brigitta Muntendorf's audiovisual piece, premiered in this form, is more entertaining Screen Sharing. Come into my inhabitable world. In the attic of the Rümlingen church, she stages, as she writes, an "interface between the real, uninhabitable and an artificial, virtual world". For the composer, everyday life and virtuality interpenetrate - they become indistinguishable, for example, where people satisfy their real sexual needs on platforms such as Youporn. Sex is in Screen Sharing little talk of it. However, YouTube snippets play a major role, overlapping with the musicians' actions on site.

Muntendorf designs the attic with instrument stations, large video screens and beautiful lighting effects in a sensitive yet highly professional manner. It all works harmoniously, developing a pull with all its additions. Pop rhythms can be heard, sterile synthesizer sounds, then wind instruments in solo or even a voice that speaks fragmentary English or German sentences. Similarities with Manos Tsangaris' station theater cannot be overlooked. Muntendorf also has individual actors sitting at their tables, with one or the other taking center stage.

Such a rich narrative is probably, among other things, a response to a complex contemporary world. In the midst of this "collage-like and rhizomatic" (Muntendorf) aesthetic of representation, however, questions also arise: Youtube could also be seen from an ideology-critical point of view. Simply quoting is too easy. At the moment when digital distraction is becoming an acute social problem, artists (and concept lovers!) should perhaps lift a finger. Or at least look for ways to create something binding again. So it is primarily the fragmentary that sticks to Rümlingen. - Unfortunately, this usually doesn't have a long half-life.