Motions // der doppelte Blick I-VII

Motions // der doppelte Blick is a cycle which began with the Menuhin-Festival in Gstaad and the Göttingen International Handel Festival, Germany, and it will continue to grow in the coming years. The festival in Gstaad took place under the motto “Motions,” the Festspiele in Göttingen revolve around the music of the Baroque master. I took both points of reference as a reason to reflect on the corporeality in music, and that far less in the sense of a diffuse metaphoric than in the sense of the sound figures that are related to the movements of the human body. In this respect, my composition can be described as an imaginary choreography.
The photographs by Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) and the experimental films by Martin Arnold (1959) served as inspiring moments. They both deal with focussing the observance of movements in such a manner that certain aspects of them come to the fore that are otherwise usually hardly ever perceived. Both are based on the phenomenon of repetition, coupled with slight shifts of perspective. A simple step or a fleeting smile in these picture perspectives can already result in a multi-faceted event.
Comparable articulations can be found in my composition. It continuously revolves around simple phrases, sound moments, or figures. They are comparable with the simple forms of movement, such as, for example, walking or bending over. Though the phrases are repeated, something nevertheless changes within them each time in the same way that a physical gesture cannot be performed identically twice and be it that only a slight tremble appears the second time.
My composition can be described as an imaginary choreography, though I developed its conception in dialogue with the choreographer Jörg Weinöhl, who also created a film at the same time. It is not about ranking the results, one below another, but it is instead about looking at them on one single level, one beside the other. You could also say that we are pursuing the question of corporeality in music and what is musical in the body, and that from two perspectives that we do not mix. Instead, we want to bring them into a relationship of reciprocal contemplation.

(Isabel Mundry, 2015)