The Academy of the Arts Berlin (Akademie der Künste) is one of the oldest European cultural institutes, founded in 1696. It consists of six sections: Fine Arts, Architecture, Music, Literature, Performing Arts, Film and Media Art, and over the years, it served as a venue for exhibitions, events and performances and an important hub for artists (and lovers of art) to meet and discuss art and cultural policies. A few years back, the lovely folks from the Studio for Electroacoustic Music (which has been part of the Akademie der Künste since the 80’s and is steeped in electroacoustic music history!), started an amazing Festival for Electroacoustic Music and Sound Art (Festival für Elektroakustische Musik und Klangkunst) called KONTAKTE and in 2021, when Malte Giesen became a director of the studio, he invited FLO to take part in the fourth edition of the festival due to happen in 2022. Needless to say, at the point of getting the invite the pandemic was still very much happening, but everyones’ hope was that this would quieten down by the time the festival was due to happen (September), and so it did!
As a follow-up to our collaboration with the Japanese dance artists Fumi Tomioka and Aki Kawashita in 2019, exploring telematic music-making inspired by movement and afforded by the network (which resulted in 2 performances taking place in Melbourne and Zagreb), we reached out to Fumi and Aki to see if they could create some work for our KONTAKTE’22 performance. Since our last collaboration, Fumi and Aki started working with a disabled dancer Hiromi Hijikata and creating performance improvisations work led by Aki, which was inspired by the ‘spaces around them and within them as they moved in the park’. As we were due to perform outdoors (at the Akademie der Künste internal courtyard), which had trees and bushes, this seemed like a perfect match.
After the videos were done, we started our usual remote rehearsal process discussing various ways in which we could approach the music composition part that could support the choreography in the videos and started sketching out the solos etc. based on the instrumentation we had available (which included of flute, trumpet, cello, piano, percussion, live electronics, voice and soundscapes, so plenty options really!).
As in the ‘pre-pandemic’ times, some of the FLO peeps were able to travel to Berlin to do tech set-up and performance in front of the audience (Nela flew in from Zadar, Ada from Oslo, Roser from Valencia whilst Magda took the train from Warsaw), whilst some joined remotely (Maria from Palermo, Italy and Léa from Poitiers, France).
During the concert, we projected 4 dance videos Aki, Fumi and Hiromi created depicting “the landscapes inside and outside of us”, whilst also streaming them to Maria and Léa via Discord (yep, another good use of the already fabulous platform!). Each video was accompanied (in real-time) by a mix of locally and remotely produced sonic textures. This mix was then expertly spatialised in 8-channels by Ada (who had so many computers, screens, controllers and cables around her that it looked like she was operating a spaceship!). On top of this, the audio mix of local and remote streams was piped from SonoBus into Touch Designer, so that Roser (who can do just about anything!) could use her midi controller to further deconstruct the visuals in real-time (having pre-programmed some ‘audio-to-visual features’ ahead of the concert). Yep, that all happened!!! And none of the gear broke down! Phew!!! And Yay!!!
Usually, at the end of each ‘co-located/distributed’ FLO performance, we bring in the remote performers via Zoom (or similar software), to say hi and explain to the audience what was going on (ie. why there was a sound of a piano, trumpet and voice but the audience could not see where this was coming from!). Fumi, Aki and Hiromi unfortunately couldn’t join us for this due to time difference between Tokyo and Berlin, but they were there ‘in spirit’, as Fumi made a short video narrated in Japanese with English subtitles, to explain how the process of creating each of the videos worked.
During the rehearsals (all of which happened remotely on SonoBus), Léa got inspired by the dance videos and proposed we connect them to the theme of mental health, with using various snippets of sound and voice narrative underpinning the theme. This worked really well and, at the end of the concert, when Maria and Léa joined us via Zoom to explain what they were using as part of their set-up, Léa also explained how she worked in the narrative about mental health into the dance videos narrative, whilst playing the video Fumi made explaining the choreography process. After the concert, some of the audience members came to ask further questions about the set-up, so we spent some time explaining everything in more detail to try to encourage the interested folks to try the “telematic thingy’ themselves!
The day after the performance, Nela did a talk about FLO and joined a discussion panel (moderated by Malte Giesen) aptly named ‘Um-/Auf-/Ausbrüche: About Resets’, alongside artists/composers Johannes Kreidler, Maximilian Marcoll and Netta Weiser. We also manage to see some of the exhibitions and concerts scheduled on those days, which was really cool!!! Doing a performance in front of an audience is always sooooo much more fun than just doing it fully remotely, as we get to share the ‘know-how’ and explain the technical as well as aesthetic aspects of FLO practice. A lot happened in those few days and by the time we had to leave Berlin we were super tired, but also super happy to have been a part of this amazing festival and visit the amazing Akademie der Künste. Until next time, below are some pics with comments to give you a better idea of how it all unfolded!
You can also watch an excerpt from the performance on the FLO YouTube channel 🙂
A BIG THANK you to the following peeps and organisations who supported FLO performance at KONTAKTE’22 in various ways:
- Our host and ‘Leiter des Studios für Elektroakustische Musik’ at the Akademie der Künste, Malte Giesen, who is also a composer (check his website here)
- The lovely Andrei Cucu who helped us with the technical set-up (which was no mean feat!) and who is also a multimedia/sound artist and sound designer (check his stuff here)
- The wonderful Lexa Thomas who expertly engineered the performance and made the live recordings we used in the YouTube video, and who is also a musician with a super long track record of playing and producing (check him out here)
- The Akademie der Künste team: Julia Mitrach, Luise Langenhan, Maurice Omene, Björn Matzen and Martha Knabe, who helped with the logistics and technical side of things!
- Our gear sponsors: Bitwig Studio, Audio-Technica, RØDE Microphones, PreSonus and NETGEAR
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