Asa Horvitz
GHOST
What do you get when you ask a machine questions about death? After the death of his father, composer Asa Horvitz collects books about death, grief and loss and feeds them into a machine learning system (AI) that creates word fragments from them. From the AI texts set to music, the artists create a performance in GHOST to mourn together with the audience, to drift into the present and the past and to commemorate the dead.
"Where are the dead?"
"Are dogs still grieving after six years?"
To questions like these, the Artificial Intelligence responded with words from the living and the dead, old words in a new order, words that belong to no one. Asa Horvitz began to sing these words and invited artist friends Carmen Q. Rothwell, Ariadne Randall and his uncle Wayne Horvitz to make music (and other things) out of them. The whole thing sounds a little medieval, a little contemporary and a lot like 20th century American music, and it's structured like a dance.
The rabbis in the Talmud cannot agree on whether the living can contact the dead or not. But Walter Benjamin and the rabbis agree: if we suspend the present and turn to the past (and the dead), every moment can become a gateway to a future we cannot even imagine.
And so the audience in GHOST can make themselves comfortable, let themselves fall completely and be sprinkled, out of being there and together something new, different, grows in the corner, over there, and it could last forever, but you just have to come and see ...
Asa Horvitz (1988) is a composer, theatre director and performance maker. His work A DREAM THAT BELONGS TO NO ONE premiered at Het HEM (Amsterdam) in June 2022 and will be seen at SPRING Utrecht in October 2022. Other recent performances have been supported by Frascati Productions (NL), deSingel (BE), Microscope Gallery, New Museum (NY), Fondazione Prada Milano, Goethe Institut Hong Kong. Horvitz studied composition with Alvin Lucier and Anthony Braxton. He has worked as a composer/musician in many contexts, including with Carmen Rothwell in VALES, Ben Seretan, members of his family, Anna Webber, Kalup Linzy, etc. In the performing arts, he has worked with L. Korczak and Scott Gibbons/Romeo Castellucci on productions that have toured internationally. Horvitz is a MacDowell, Fulbright and Camargo Scholar and graduated from DAS Arts in 2021.
Credits
Artistic direction Asa Horvitz With and by Asa Horvitz, Wayne Horvitz, Carmen Q. Rothwell, Ariadne Randall, AI System Cooperation Stage and costume design Evandro Pedroni Printing Customised T-shirts Le Van Hung Ceramics Jacob Bartmann Counselling Oneka von Schrader, Joachim Robbrecht AI design Seraphina Tarrant, Alejandro Calcaño AI UX design Dave Cochran Assistant lighting Theo Emil Krausz Booklet design/Editing Nica Horvitz Production Golden Trout Wilderness (NL/USA), Celestial Excursions Vienna, SHOW MACHINE, Waffa al-Attas, Nora Duijf, Sophie Menzinger, Theo Krausz Production partner SPRING Performing Arts Festival, Frascati, Musiktheatertage Wien, Het HEM, Het Muziekgebouw, brut wien With the kind support of City of Vienna Culture, Federal Ministry of Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport Austria; Amsterdam Fonds voor Kunst, Gemeente Utrecht, Amsterdam Zuid, KlavierLoft
A production of Golden Trout Wilderness in collaboration with Celestial Excursions Vienna, SHOW MACHINE, brut Wien and MUSIKTHEATERTAGE WIEN
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Dates & Tickets
September 2023
€ 25 full price / € 15 reduced / € 10 CARE
€ 25 full price / € 15 reduced / € 10 CARE
€ 25 full price / € 15 reduced / € 10 CARE
brut nordwest
Nordwestbahnstraße 8-10, 1200 Vienna
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Johannesgasse 4, 1010 Vienna
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