Sensations of getting lost

Reflection

Elisa Erkelenz
dramaturg

Performance Form

The performance form of Contain resembles more an installative performance than a classical concert. The open spaces ensure a mix between artists and the public. The surfaces between the projections become musical performance venues: constellations of musicians vary, focused situations alternate with large-format, live and electronically generated soundscapes, for which the musicians inside are distributed throughout the space. The evening is intended to invite discussion, but also identification and communication.

Drama Notes

In five stages we devote ourselves to the feeling of "getting lost" - we lose truths, certainties, clear ideas. Starting from the element of water and an essay by David Foster Wallace ("This is Water"), which becomes part of the musical level both as an original and in Cantonese, we enter a situation of loss of control, which opens up spaces of association both human and political. Fragments of interviews conducted in May 2019 shortly before the protests in Hong Kong are mixed with recordings of the streets between June and September 2019 by Hong Kong composer Fiona Lee. The levels cannot be clearly assigned; the disorientation of the audience is part of the performance. In the third stage, we head more concretely towards the shipping industry and come from the sea to the theme of "Seablindness" and otones by journalist Rose George (author of the book "90 Percent of Everything"). Much of what happens at sea eludes our knowledge and imagination: be it the almost 600 captains currently held captive by pirates, be it the acoustic pollution of the sea for which there is still no legal framework, be it the fact that 90% of the food in our globalized world is transported by container ships - or the hardly discussed slavery of many, especially Filipino, workers. The Hong Kong-Hamburg line is one of the busiest in the world. The container ship becomes the point of contention for a loss of control of the global market for goods, the effects of which we feel in concrete catastrophes such as the coronavirus, but also on a more generally perceived level of alienation. The performance in the fourth stage is devoted to the question of what a coming together of a musical, but also of a solidary nature can look like, in a purely musical and acoustic way. Finally, the attempts at coming together lead to a balance of creative indifference according to Salomo Friedländer. His philosophy, which is introduced by an interview with the philosopher Alice Lagaay, among others, is described: Only in the middle between the poles does one have the possibility to turn to the whole beyond the differences. This middle is not boring, but creative. "That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing."

The dramaturgical level is always part of and serving the musical level: Snippets of interviews are woven into compositions by the collaborative composer Simon James Phillips - it is not about “understanding“ them word by word. Basically, the performance is composed as an acoustic-visual spatial experience in which the reception of the audience is actively involved as a resonance of the evoked allusions. The sketched "sensations of getting lost" multiply by each individual listening experience.

Konzertinstallation Berlin (February 2022)

Contain - Sensations of Getting Lost. from Folkert Uhde on Vimeo.

90 percent of all goods worldwide are transported by container ship, yet we are “sea blind” (Rose George) to much of what happens on the ocean. Every year, more than 1,500 containers fall overboard and go adrift. Ships sink or run aground and animals become disorientated...

The Hamburg-based Ensemble Resonanz and the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble come to Radialsystem in February 2022, where their installative concert delves into the experience of getting lost in different chapters and states, with video compositions by composers Samson Young and Simon James Phillips as well as improvisations and repertory pieces. Between streaming sounds, videos and interview fragments, and profound darkness and light, musicians and audience float through states of being lost and discover new ways of reuniting in the in-between. This is water, a no man’s land.

The political developments in 2019 had a strong impact on the further cooperation for Contain, as well as the pandemic, which now also makes it impossible for the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble to enter the country for this installation. The original theme of "getting lost" has become serious with the real developments. In five states we trace them with this concert installation:

1. Water

This is water. A no man’s land.

2. Getting Lost

Made in China is written on the biggest part of the containers. Made in Hong Kong on some others. The hidden inside.

3. Sea blindness

We are seablind for most things happening on the ocean. Pirates. Floating containers (more than 1.500 a year).

4. Coming together

Tentacles touch each other lightly… Searching for possibilities to come together again in the dark.

5. Indifference

The middle is not boring, but creative, the philosopher Salomo Friedländer says. Only in the middle between the poles does one have the possibility to turn to the whole beyond the differences. “That is real freedom…The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing."

Concert Installation Hong Kong (September 2022)

To take place at The Box, Freespace, West Kowloon Cultural District.

Currently in development.

Biography

Elisa Erkelenz

Elisa Erkelenz is a freelance curator, dramaturg and author in the field of classical, contemporary and trans-traditional music. After years at the Ensemble Resonanz as a dramaturg and deputy manager, she launched the artistic research Outernational in 2019, which is dedicated to transtraditional, contemporary music, and its discourses in concerts and listening sessions in Berlin and Europe as well as in its own magazine (VAN Outernational). With violinist David-Maria Gramse she curates and moderates the podcast »Des Pudels Kern«. As a freelance dramaturg and curator, she works for various houses and festivals, from the Elbphilharmonie to the Donaueschinger Musiktage and Deutschlandfunk. She writes for the VAN magazine, among others, and teaches dramaturgy at the HAW in Hamburg.

CARAVANSERAIS

Sensations of getting lost