Alex Franz Zehetbauer & Christian Schröder
AyH
Beginning with an interest in spirals, AyH is a sonic experiment guided by the work and methods of the painter and mystic Hilma af Klint. It is a concert of acoustic paintings composed by several non-human musicians in collaboration with Alex Franz Zehetbauer and Christian Schröder. Together they generate visualizations of sound that diagram polyphony as a concept that is both ethereal and tangible. Between seemingly disparate elements a language is forming, both clear and indecipherable, like something you already know—or something ancient.
INFO:
To fully enjoy the sound, we recommend using headphones during the event.
A basin of water envelopes sound and breath, a portal from which sono-aquatic figures emerge. A hydrophone excavates the inside of a mouth, amplifying the sucking wet swamp therein. A contra bass – dignified, resonates as a living shape in the room. Vibrating cock-rings hang from strings that pierce the room. A group of human and non-human musicians are painting in brush strokes of tone, sonic symbol, rhythm, breath and code-like melody.
The transformation process from audible to visible is inspired by Hilma af Klints work as a mystic and painter. She was a member of “The Five“, a group of women who met regularly to hold seances to communicate with divine entities. They documented their encounters with the divine through automatic drawings and a detailed cataloguing of the information they received. This resulted in a growing “language” of symbols, figures, shapes, and code-like letter groupings. The title of this concert performance comes from this language: “AyH”, which means “to find”.
Alex Franz Zehetbauer is a singer, sonic choreographer, and performance artist based in Vienna. His work engages with the voice as an embodied activity that moves aqueously between the realms of the physical, energetic, and collective-subconscious body. Alex studied vocal performance, dance, acting and composition at NYU Tisch School of the Arts and the International Theater Workshop in Amsterdam. He has been awarded the BKA Startstipendium (2018), the TURBO Residency – ImPulsTanz (2018) and the danceWEB Scholarship (2019). His performance wet dreaming at 52Hz (2019) was first shown at brut’s festival imagetanz.
Christian Schröder lives and works in Vienna. He studied fine arts/media arts/music at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Since 2010 he is a member of Kollektiv/Rauschen and collaborates with performers like Melanie Maar, Synes Elischka, Mariella Greil and Daria Faïn. His works were shown at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, among others. He was awarded the Adlmüller scholarship (2007), the BKA Startstipendium (2014) and the first prize for electronic music Salzburg (2019). His last composition was presented in ani_male (2020) by Georg Blaschke & Jan Machacek at brut Wien.
Credits
Concept & Choreography Alex Franz Zehetbauer Composition & Performance Alex Franz Zehetbauer and Christian Schröder Outside Eye Stina Fors Production mollusca productions
A co-production between Verein Wilhelmina and brut Wien
With the generous support of apap – performing europe, Huggy Bears, Im_flieger, Szene Salzburg, Tanzfabrik Berlin
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