Sounding Changes

For the premiere of their new concert series “Disturbing the Universal,” the Trickster Orchestra and dramaturg Elisa Erkelenz presented a new daring experiment between thought, spoken word, and music: the Outernational Listening Session.

The orchestra invited two leading international scholars, Wendy M.K. Shaw (Freie Universität Berlin) and Timothy Morton (Rice University, Houston), to perform and improvise on themes of colonialism, decolonial change, and ecological transformation in dialogue with the musicians.

Timothy Morton’s sonic material was constructed through thoughts on hyper-objects, beauty, and climate, while Wendy M.K. Shaw based her contribution on a story of music, wisdom, and healing by 10th-century Arabic philosopher Al-Farabi. As they spoke, both were interrupted by musicians who themselves started speaking through their instruments in order to create a multi-language, multimedia performed installation between spoken word, thought, and music.

Interested in the result? Click here!