Prism
2016 Gothenburg & Berlin;
My role: Producer —
I produced the interdisciplinary performance Prism that took place simultaneously in Berlin and Gothenburg at 8pm on Friday December 2nd 2016 and was streamed live on the internet. 10 musicians in each city could hear and react to what was being played in the other city. While this technology is now, in the aftermath of the pandemic, commonplace and widely established, in 2016 it was a challenge to master the necessary logistics to be able to conduct this project. Prism was as much an artistic experiment as it was a technological feat.
The Berlin section focused on rhythmic patterns whereas the Gothenburg section contributed elegic spherical soundscapes to match. We attributed a chiaroscuro theme to the two sites: Berlin as the heart of darkness, Gothenburg as the center of light. This binary aspect transported the idea of unity — the prism refracts white light into its spectral colors, what once was an entity is now scattered into parts that float around individually and seek to reconnect. The project aimed to lead back into the wholeness of the white light by means of a swarm effort, 20 performers playing compositions by PC Nackt and Ben Lauber and forming a human backdrop for light installations by the artist group Transforma (Berlin) and myself (Gothenburg).
While being predominantly an experimental and one-off performative piece, Prism paved the way for transformative approaches that combine different musical modules which can be performed/ consumed independently as well as in synchronicity, or even — as the participants discovered — out of synch yet still in unison.
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