audiovisual installation COVERED CULTURE

In the German-Asian project COVERED CULTURE, Brigitta Muntendorf and Moritz Lobeck explore cultural imprints, individual interpretations and collective appropriations as potentials of the choric forms. The musical object of analysis is the humming - as sound, in its intimate and personal meaning and as a moment of levelling.
 

Based on fragments of Beethoven's vocal music and his political view of the collective, Muntendorf/Lobeck develop an 8-channel audiovisual installation in which voices and images of singers of the Beijing Queer Chorus, the opera choir of Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar and numerous singers and performers from China, Korea and Japan are established as a virtual choir. For the exhibitions in Berlin, Shanghai and Beijing the choir and the audience are connected within a table object designed by the Japanese architect KATO and prepared with exciters to form a social sculpture. On the other hand, soundwalls are part of the installations in Seoul, Tokyo and Kyoto. In this joint discovery and investigation of the unfamiliar, COVERED CULTURE follows the vision of a hyperculture and the critical questioning of hymnal celebratory cultures.

COVERED CULTURE is the first joint work by Muntendorf/Lobeck, their next project is an opera for Ensemble Modern, commissioned by Bregenzer Festspiele 2022.
 
The German-Austrian composer Brigitta Muntendorf creates music that exists at the intersection of various art forms and modes of expression, a web of multi-layered references and connections.

She has received grants from the Cité Internationale des Arts Paris and Villa Kamogawa Kyoto, in 2014 she received the Ernst von Siemens Composers Prize and in 2017 the German Music Authors’ Prize by GEMA. Her works are played by numerous ensembles. Since 2017 Brigitta Muntendorf has been Professor of Composition at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln. 

Moritz Lobeck, born in Dresden, studied musicology, urban sociology and psychology at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He worked as a curator and communication consultant in Berlin and as a dramaturg for several productions at Staatsoper Berlin, Stuttgart, Wien and in Salzburg.

From 2011 he worked as dramaturg and head of development with Andrea Moses and Jossi Wieler at Staatsoper Stuttgart and from 2014 as curator at the international and multidisciplinary art festival Wiener Festwochen. Since 2018 he has been programme director for music and media in HELLERAU - European Centre for the Arts and artistic director of the biennial festival for contemporary music TONLAGEN - Dresdner Tage der zeitgenössischen Musik.

Concept, music, video: Brigitta Muntendorf
Concept, dramaturgy: Moritz Lobeck
Design sound table: KATO Hiroshi and Giacomo Sponzilli
Light: Begoña Garcia Navas
Multichannel mix / audiodesign: Sebastian Schottke
Audio / video network system: Maximilian Estudies
Video technology / planning: Warped Type
Assistant: Nicolas Berge

Choir // solo singer: Beijing Queer Chorus, Opera Choir of Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar, Open Call Choir (self recordings of numerous people from Japan, Korea and China provided by an open call) // Shii, Menthae (Shanghai), Maki Ota (Kyoto), Esther Lee (Seoul / Berlin)

Performer:  XIAO KE x ZI HAN,  LIN CUIXI, Xinxin Song, Zhihao Huang, Jianjie Wu (Shanghai) / Ensemble Sonne: Toshiko Oka, Masaru Kakio, Seiko Kuwano, Koji Itose, Ema Fumiyama (Osaka / Kyoto)

Recording Teams: Marc Mehanni (camera) / Elsa Michanol (assistant), Day Yokota (camera)

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