Neuer Kunstraum, Düsserldorf
02/08/2020
for Klangraum 2020 ‘day by day III’
Composed by Emmanuelle Waeckerlé
Performed by Antoine Beuger (voice), Seamus Cater (voice, concertina), Eva-Maria Houben (voice), Kevin Leomo (clarinette), Andre o. möller (voice), lörinc muntag (violin) , Daniil Pilchen (voice), steven vinkenoog (electric guitar), Emmanuelle Waeckerlé (voice), Deborah Walker (sompoton mouth organ, voice)
What better way to conclude the 2nd week of Klangraum 2020 where we were welcomed by a poster by Angelina Simon, affirming that “the time for hope is always“ (Rebecca Solnit)
“ Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act. When you recognize uncertainty, you recognize that you may be able to influence the outcomes — you alone or you in concert with a few dozen or several million others.”
The score
I wrote the text score for black and blue (the color of hope in the dark) on Brexit day (31/01/20) as a way of dealing with the overwhelming despair I felt. It is based on Rebecca Solnit’s Hope in the Dark: untold histories, wild possibilites (2004, 2016) in which she makes a radical case for hope as a commitment to act in a world whose future remains uncertain and unknowable, which is what I did on that dreadful day and what the score invites us to do individually and collectively.
A digital release
During lockdown 1.0, I invited N.O. Moore and Edward Shipsey to collaborate remotely on a performing of the score. I structured the digital release like a double album with an invisible divide between a virtual A side (electronic, almost) and a B side (unplugged, just about).