Exhibition Information

2020

2020

			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 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. 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.

Due to the coronavirus, trips of the directing team and recording sessions in Asia were initially cancelled. Instead, the rehearsals, visits of the venues and the whole production in Asia happened via distance direction while the additional recordings with the Weimar Opera Choir were realized live in the opera house of the National Theater Weimar in the summer of 2020.

Brigitta Muntendorf
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 like Ensemble Modern, Klangforum Wien, Mocrep Chicago, Musikfabrik and Les Siècles at festivals worldwide such as Festival d’Automne Paris, Ruhrtriennale, Theater der Welt, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Warsaw Autumn, Münchener Biennale, Musica Strasbourg, ULTIMA Oslo, ONASSIS Athen, Metro Club Kyoto, Art Share L.A. and Elbphilharmonie Hamburg. Since 2017 Brigitta Muntendorf has been Professor of Composition at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln.

Moritz Lobeck
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 a dramaturg and head of development 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.