Transformative Narratives (Lena Kuzmich, Tony Wagner & Guests)
Choir of Kin – Installation
Choir of Kin is an immersive, audio-visual performance/installation by the collective Transformative Narratives. In the hall at brut nordwest, the voices of numerous lifeforms come together in a fictional habitat. The piece applies a queer understanding of kinship to research involving ecology, biology, and musical theory as a way of rethinking our relationship with our natural environment. The themes and the artistic approach are based on Transformative Narratives’ studies on symbiosis, the entanglement of landscapes, and sympoietic world-building. Choir of Kin is a resilient, yet dissonant system attempting to deal with ecological and cross-generational trauma.
Opening times installation Choir of Kin: Thu, 14/Fri, 15 &Sat, 16 March, 6:00–8:00 pm & 9:00–11:00 pm / Thu, 21 &Fri, 22 March, 7:00–8:00 pm & 9:00–11:00 pm / Sat, 23 March, 8:00–9:00 pm (Pay as you can)
Performance Choir of Kin: Thu, 14 / Fri, 15 / Sat, 16 March, 8:00 pm (Choose your price category €22 / €16 / €11)
In Choir of Kin, the collective Transformative Narratives invites the audience to partake in an immersive audiovisual experience. The installation, together with a performance that commences from March 14-16th, see the voices of various life forms merge in a fictional habitat. Explorative sounds reverberating in this intricate scenery cherish the get-together of human and non-human collaborators in a multi-species affair.
The piece roots in the collective's inquiries into symbiosis, entanglement of landscapes, and sympoietic world-building. Queer understandings of kinship are applied to research in ecology, biology, and music theory. Practices of active listening and engagement with beyond-human agencies form crucial methodologies.
Sonic and textual interventions by the human performers meet sound creations generated from data by non-human life. Inhabiting the hall at brut nordwest, the artists form a choir with the scenery they sonically interact with. This Choir of Kin acts as a resilient yet dissonant defense system for dealing with environmental and generational trauma.
Transformative Narratives, a collective founded by musicians/performance artists Tony Wagner and Lena Kuzmich, initiates performative and audio-visual experiences through transdisciplinary world-building strategies. By linking stories, transformable characters and insights into imaginary landscapes, the collective focuses on the transformative powers of the self as well as the urgency of collective growth and radical care. Symbiotic togetherness is both key theme and method in devising their projects, which are comprised of experimental music, visual art, and text. The initiated projects suggest the queering of relationships and kinship, weaving personal narratives into co-operative, performative experiences. In their most recent work, Transformative Narratives explores cross-species worlds, thus relearning how to negotiate space and creating fellowship.
Credits
Concept development, staging, artistic direction, set design concept, costume design concept, project planning, production assistance, installation, lighting concept, visuals, text, performance, electronics Lena Kuzmich Concept development, staging, artistic direction, set design concept, costume design concept, project planning, production assistance, installation, lighting concept, composition, text, performance, violin Tony WagnerConcept development, composition, text, performance, piano, modular synthesizer, vocals Karolina Preuschl Concept development, composition, text, performance, piano, synthesizer, vocals Hyeji Nam Harp, text, vocals Miriam Adefris Cello, text, vocals Christina Ruf Contrabass, text, vocals Melinda Franzke Head of production Melissa Antunes de Menezes Light design and technics Leo Kuraitė Horticulture, set design Barbara Urbanic Stage design Georg Hampe Costume amaaenaStudio, Yi-Jing Chen – Growing with Garments Head of Make-up Parnia Sarraf @aetna.club Make-up assistance Cameron Lee Felton @aetna.club Electronics, Coding Rein van der Woerd, Marwin Nehl, Peter Arnold Video documentation Ipek Hamzaoglu Photo documentation Marcella Ruiz Cruz Text Lennart Horst Graphic design Tiger Dingsun Scientific collaborators Joshua Lawrence (Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, UK), Alberto Scarampi (Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge, UK), Artscience Lab Hybrid Forms (The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, NL), Photosynthetic Device: Dr. Paolo Bombelli (Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge, UK) Sponsoring of Reishi mushroom installation and support in the research process Mushroom Research Center Austria
A co-production of imagetanz 2024/brut Wien and Transformative Narratives.
With the kind support of the City of Vienna’s Department of Cultural Affairs, SKE, Federal Ministry of Art, Culture, Civil Service and Sport. Development of this project was supported by the European Media Art Platform in the framework of a research residency at Antre Peaux, France.
Dates & Tickets
Opening times installation Choir of Kin:
Thu, 14/Fri, 15 &Sat, 16 March, 6:00–8:00 pm & 9:00–11:00 pm
Thu, 21 &Fri, 22 March, 7:00–8:00 pm & 9:00–11:00 pm
Sat, 23 March, 8:00–9:00 pm
Pay as you can
Performance Choir of Kin:
Thu, 14 / Fri, 15 / Sat, 16 March, 8:00 pm
Choose your price category €22 / €16 / €11
March 2024
Installation: Pay as you can
Installation: Pay as you can
Installation: Pay as you can
Installation: Pay as you can
Installation: Pay as you can
Installation: Pay as you can
Installation: Pay as you can
Installation: Pay as you can
Installation: Pay as you can
Installation: Pay as you can
Installation: Pay as you can
brut nordwest
Nordwestbahnstraße 8-10, 1200 Vienna
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brut all over Vienna
brut nordwest
accessible
Nordwestbahnstraße 8-10, 1200 Vienna
Subway: U1, U2 (Praterstern), U4 (Friedensbrücke), U6 (Dresdnerstraße) Tram: 5 (Nordwestbahnstraße) Bus: 5A (Wasnergasse)
Meeting point: Gasthaus Hansy at Praterstern
accessible
Heinestraße 42 , 1020 Vienna
Subway: U1, U2 (Praterstern) / S-Bahn: S1, S2, S3, S4, S7 (Praterstern) / Tram: 5 (Praterstern)
brut at Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien
accessible
Freyung 8, 1010 Vienna
Subway: U1 (Stephansplatz), U2 (Schottentor), U3 (Herrengasse) / Tram: 1, 37, 38, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44 (Schottentor) / Bus: 1A, 2A (Herrengasse U), 3A (Renngasse)
Rote Bar at Volkstheater
accessible
Arthur-Schnitzler-Platz 1, 1070 Vienna
Subway: U3 (Volkstheater) / Tram: 49 (Volkstheater) / Bus: 48A (Volkstheater)
brut at Sportplatz 1210
accessible
Jedlersdorfer Platz 25, 1210 Vienna
Subway U6 (Florisdorf) / S-Bahn: S1, S2, S3, S4, S7 (Floridsdorf) / Tram: 30, 31 (Brünner Straße / Hanreitergasse) / Bus: 30A, 32A (Toni Fritsch Weg)
studio brut
not accessible
Zieglergasse 25, 1070 Wien
Subway: U3 (Zieglergasse), Tram: 49 (Westbahnstraße / Zieglergasse)
brut nordwest – rehearsal space
not accessible
Nordwestbahnstraße 8-10, 1200 Vienna