Conversation, Reading & Listening Sessions

Contemplations into the Radical Others: Laboratory Part 3

Lucia Dlugoszewski / Ensemble Musikfabrik / Katherine Duke / Louis Kavouras and many others

Excerpt from handwritten notes on compositions with a rhythm concept using Lucia Dlugoszewski's name as an example.

Lucia Dlugoszewski, excerpt from notes on compositions © Library of Congress

As part of the research project “Contemplations into the Radical Others”, artists and experts are exploring various questions about Lucia Dlugoszewskis output and the management of her estate in an interdisciplinary laboratory.

More events of the project

Contemplations into the Radical Others: Laboratory Part 1
Thursday 21.3., 12:00–16:00

Contemplations into the Radical Others: Laboratory Part 2
Saturday 23.3., 12:00 – 15:30

Almost a quarter of a century after her death, the reappraisal of Lucia Dlugoszewskis extensive oeuvre is still in its infancy. The second part of the project “Contemplations into the Radical Others” initiated by MaerzMusik features a laboratory to discuss pressing questions about the administration of her estate and the academic and non-academic reception of her work. How should the work of an artist who moves so fluidly between disciplines be categorised? How can her work that spans music and dance, sound and movement, be methodically analysed? What specifically needs to be taken into account regarding her work with percussion? Who owns her archive, and who can lay claim to the more than one hundred instruments she designed? The participating artists will discuss issues such as these along with experts on Dlugoszewski in an open, interdisciplinary exchange.

“Contemplations into the Radical Others” is a research project on Lucia Dlugoszewski launched by MaerzMusik with Ensemble Musikfabrik, the Erick Hawkins Dance Company, Katherine Duke and Agnese Toniutti. After kicking off last year, the endeavour continues with a deeper exploration of the life and work of the composer, who died in 2000. Dlugoszewski, who was also active as a poet, studied with Edgard Varèse, Grete Sultan and John Cage in the late 1940s, impressed Arnold Schönberg with her piano playing and sought ways to create new sounds in her work on the prepared piano. She also designed over a hundred instruments, some of which have been reconstructed for “Contemplations into the Radical Others” by Musikfabrik member Thomas Meixner. Dlugoszewskis exploration of the seemingly mundane as well as the radically different focussed on the immediacy of music. Not only did she work behind the scenes as a composer for the Erick Hawkins Dance Company, she often performed poetically on stage next to the dancers. In collaboration with the Cologne-based Ensemble Musikfabrik, her work is brought to the fore with the same style in which she originally conceived it: as an expression of the freedom of sound, which in turn is meant to offer the audience moments of freedom. The ensemble is now presenting some of its pieces for the first time in Europe after painstakingly reconstructing the scores from existing recordings. In addition to a concert evening with Musikfabrik, three commissioned works in response to Dlugoszewski and a comprehensive laboratory that will thoroughly examine and discuss her music, sound and philosophy, the second part of “Contemplations into the Radical Others”, features performances by pianist Toniutti and choreographers Duke and Edivaldo Ernesto with members of the Erick Hawkins Dance Company along with Berlin-based dancers. Three commissioned works by Bethan Morgan-Williams, Mazyar Kashian and Elena Rykova will also be performed as part of the project, offering an artistic response to Dlugoszewski.

Programme

The series is part of the festival’s focus on Lucia Dlugoszewski.

12:00 | Conversation: Processes and Procedures
with Christine Chapman, Marco BlaauwMonika Żyła and Kamila Metwaly

Performance: Song for the Poetry of Everyday Sound
with Katherine Duke and Kate Doyle

13:00 | Lecture: Chasing the Morning Star: The Aesthetic and Philosophical Armatures of Lucia Dlugoszewski
with Louis Kavouras

14:00 | Lecture: The Musical Cartography of Lucia Dlugoszewski
with Dustin Hurt

15:00 | Conversation: Transformations of Cantilever
with Dustin Hurt

16:00 | Performance: Lucia Dlugoszewski’s “Violin Music for the Left Ear in a Small Room”
with Hannah Weirich