“Most Echtzeitmusik is rather abstract. The sounds do not relate to something outside of the sound. The sounds mean nothing but themselves. Maybe they remind one that the refrigerator urgently needs to be repaired. Or one is able to recognise the sound of one’s own favourite kitchen appliance. But one will forget the refrigerator or rather begin to ‘listen to it’. And forget the cream, because the whisk is there to ‘celebrate’ the sound detached from any meaning.
The greatness of this music is also, paradoxically, its own parody. The seriousness with which Echtzeitmusik musicians sometimes present their ‘almost nothing’ wakes in me the desire to do exactly the opposite and give everything a meaning. An overlapping of movements and sounds through meanings – this could call abstraction into question.
Classical ‘dance’ in a narrower sense usually claims the same abstraction. The body, that poor machine required to function nonstop, can finally find peace and quiet in abstract dance – and of course also sweating, but differently than we sweat when we dance in clubs on Fridays, with friends, to celebrate, to forget, to feel.
I would like to make a piece with musician-performers who have inspired me to question borders. What is abstract? What is ‘neutral’? I want to investigate the term ‘neutral’ in all its layers and facets. ‘Neutral’ is a common term with which performers describe their presence on stage. Its impossibility fascinates me.
One person waiting for the bus looks neutral and yet carries in them layers of innumerable, multifarious feelings and to-do and to-be lists. It’s easy to watch them at length. A ‘neutral’ position on stage, however, makes the performer even more naked and sometimes empty. This provocation is, for me, the starting point for this new piece.” – Fernanda Farah