Rede in Es-Dur

In 1977, a NASA-team designed the “Golden Record” for the space probe voyager: a kind of time capsule, intended to give potential space travellers of the future an impression of Earth. With the aid of images, greetings in 55 languages and around 90 minutes of music from various genres, the intention was to give a representative portrait of the Earth and of “human beings” – and of the intelligence and the vision necessary to even invent and equip such a vehicle. Interstellar communication as the summit of the gift of reason inherent in human beings as a species – even if Planet Earth may have already been caused to collapse by human beings themselves when the record is decoded. Where did the great promises of perpetual progress get us? Human beings, who style themselves as the pinnacle of creation all the way into space, appear to have failed in their own reason 300 years after the beginning of the Enlightenment. 

In a format hitherto unusual for her, climate protection activist Luisa Neubauer takes the ambitious project of the “Golden Record” as the basis of her exploration of humankind’s self-conception. Beethoven’s poignant string quartet movement “Cavatina”, which is also part of the “Golden Record”, will be newly interpreted for this purpose by Ensemble Resonanz.