OUT OF SIGHT –
Invisible Borders
Compositions by
Daniel Kötter und Christina Kubisch
Premiere: 13./14. June 2025.
Signals in the Dark
What happens when you hear rhythmic sounds in the dark, lying down, motionless? When the signals are unfamiliar or unrecognizable? When the movements you would normally make to them are not possible?
The “signals” used are of electromagnetic origin and were recorded in areas where something is automatically secured, marked, registered or monitored, for example in shopping malls, parking lofts or data centers. The systems are hidden and yet present everywhere. In superimpositions and rhythmic sequences, they lead a life of their own, the origin of which is no longer traceable.
Christina Kubisch
Christina Kubisch (*1948), composer and sound artist, uses electromagnetic fields in her works alongside instrumental sounds and field recordings. Using sensors she has developed herself, she makes the normally inaudible electrical signals acoustically tangible. For over two decades, she has not only been investigating and collecting these sounds worldwide, but also using her recordings of hidden electrical activity in her pieces and installations. Christina Kubisch has received numerous international awards such as the Giga-Hertz Prize of the ZKM 2021 for her life’s work or the prize for the best world premiere at the Biennale Musica Venice 2022.
Website:
www.christinakubisch.de
www.electricalwalks.org
Silva, Tretuk, 8 April 2022
On a cold April afternoon in 2022, Silva Abramyan, 65, steps out of her house in the small Armenian village of Tretuk, turns eastwards and begins to listen. Daniel Kötter’s work ‘Silva, Tretuk, 8 April 2022’ transports the listener to a landscape in the disputed border region between Armenia and Azerbaijan. There, where one is seen without seeing, listening becomes a factor of survival: a psychogeography of fear.
Daniel Kötter
Daniel Kötter is a documentary filmmaker and theatre director. He is particularly interested in urbanisation and political landscapes in Africa and West Asia. His music theatre performances in collaboration with the composer Hannes Seidl have been shown at numerous international festivals since 2008. Between 2009 and 2015, he developed the series state-theatre on conditions of theatre architecture and urban performativity in Lagos, Tehran, Berlin, Detroit, Beirut and Mönchengladbach (with Constanze Fischbeck). In 2014-17 he worked with the curator Jochen Becker on the research, exhibition and film project CHINAFRIKA. Under construction. His film Hashti Teheran (60′, 2017) was awarded the German Short Film Award. Rift Finfinnee (79′, 2020) about urbanisation in Ethiopia won the DEFA Prize at DOK Leipzig. His most recent film Landshaft (2023, 97′) won the award for best documentary film from the German Film Critics’ Association.