COW

Ekman talents extend to the lighting and stage design and his eye for structuring an environment is unerring. There is no set as such, excepting the plaster cow which dangles overhead, but the stage surface has its share of movement as little island-blocks rise up and pits sink down. The extreme tilting of the stage at one point causes unfortunate Bauch to roll, cow-like, almost into the pit. COW has its iconic Ekman moment in the scene that opens on a stage full of swirling dancers in white skirts set in a magical silvery mist. Mikael Karlsson, whose music partners the piece provides a subtle and evocative soundscape. He offers a hint of percussive rhythm picked up by the dancers who launch into an ecstatic dance: a stage full of whirling dervishes, until they collapse exhausted.

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Ekmans Talente erstrecken sich auf die Beleuchtung und das Bühnenbild, und sein Auge für die Strukturierung einer Umgebung ist unfehlbar. Es gibt kein Set als solches, außer der Gipskuh, die über ihnen baumelt, aber die Bühnenoberfläche hat ihren Anteil an Bewegung, wenn kleine Inselblöcke aufsteigen und Gruben sinken. Das extreme Kippen der Bühne an einer Stelle führt dazu, dass der unglückliche Bauch kuhartig fast in die Grube rollt. COW hat seinen legendären Ekman-Moment in der Szene, die auf einer Bühne voller wirbelnder Tänzer in weißen Röcken in einem magischen silbernen Nebel beginnt. Mikael Karlsson, dessen Musikpartner das Stück ist, bietet eine subtile und eindrucksvolle Klanglandschaft. Er bietet einen Hauch von perkussivem Rhythmus, der von den Tänzern aufgenommen wurde, die einen ekstatischen Tanz beginnen: eine Bühne voller wirbelnder Derwische, bis sie erschöpft zusammenbrechen.

Ikon of Eros

The tempo of the music changes frequently, illustrating love that at times may be almost austere and at other times ecstatic. In the second movement an ethereal female chorus is suddenly punctuated by deep percussion instruments and gives way to an almost erotic middle eastern beat, contrasting a pure spiritual love with a more physical, sensual form.

ICARUS
The National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain
conducted by Mark Wigglesworth
“What makes this myth so touching is Icarus’s impatience of the heart, his wish to reach the unreachable, the intensity of the ecstatic brevity of his flight and inevitability of his fall. If Icarus were to fly safely – there would be no myth. His tragic death is beautiful. It also poses the question – from Deadalus‘ point of view – how can one distinguish success from failure? Deadalus‘ greatest invention, the wings which allowed a man to fly, was his greatest failure as they caused the death of his son. Deadalus was brilliant, his wings were perfect, but he was also a blind father who did not truly understand his child.” LERA AUERBACH

האופנאית הנודעת קו קו שאנל אמרה פעם, שההבדל בין אופנה לארכיטקטורה, הוא בפרופורציות.
Tara Keens-Douglas סיימה עתה את לימודי הארכיטקטורה באוניברסיטה של אונטריו קנדה ובעבודת הגמר שלה Ecstatic Spaces, היא חוקרת את הקשר בין תלבושות הקרנבל בארץ מולדתה טרינידד, לארכיטקטורה אישית. באמצעות מבני לבוש מנייר לבן העוטים נשים, היא ממחישה כי התלבושות הגרוטסקיות של הקרנבל יוצרות הגזמה וסובלימציה, הן מהוות כלי תקשורת בין הגוף לחלל, הן דרך לביטוי עצמי, הן רוויות הומור, לועגות לרצינות של העולם הפוליטי שמנהל את חיינו והן חוצות מעמדות. התלבושת היא אם כך הארכיטקטורה של הגוף, מעצימה את הגוף ונותנת לו פרופורציות שאין לו ועושה לו אידיאליזציה. התלבושות גם מעניקות זהות לקהילה, ומאפשרות לנו לצאת מתוך גופנו ולהתחבר למשהו רחב יותר, לאקסטזה של הפסטיבל שמסביב.

לינדר סטרלינג
ЛИНДЕР СТЕРЛИНГОВ

The bodies, objects and surfaces were recognisably 21st century, but details and composition seemed oddly out of time, not least because the imagery was excised from print magazines and not from the internet, but also because the completed works so readily recalled Linder’s first photomontage experiments. Her pairings of different types of consumerist desire, which once declared themselves as critiques of misogynist objetification, are now equally a part of an abiding artistic practice. For example, looking at a particular conjunction of mock-ecstatic porn performers and ornate confectionery, we get the “message” but know too that we can only be in the obsessive, repetitive world of Linderland.

100% Other Fibres
Through collisions of image, noise, objects, language and bodies, Heather Phillipson’s videos and sculptural installations behave as places, musical scores, poems and nervous systems – attending to how physical and affective ‘selves’ are constructed, manipulated and, above all, escape. Often rendered as walk-in conglomerations of readily accessible materials (digital images, paint, cardboard, words, audio loops and reproducible consumer detritus), her works stake out an ambiguous territory in which cultural references and emotional responses are mutually contingent and reactive. Collapsing distinctions between the forthright and the inarticulable, the banal and the ecstatic, and between metaphor and extreme literalisation, Phillipson’s work performs constant tonal shifts, disruptions and bleeds. In so doing, it oscillates between physical intimacies and conceptual distances – desire, sensuality, touching and being touched, shame, anxiety, (over-)exposure, resistant surfaces.