11 Instruments Built by the Planets

In the Trickster Podcast, members and friends of the orchestra discuss questions concerning post-migrant society and contemporary music.

Witty as the orchestra itself, the Trickster Podcast opens a polyphonic and shape-shifting mosaic. It introduces ensemble members, lets instruments speak, and offers insights into the orchestra’s artistic approaches, projects, and social concerns.

In episode 11, orchestra manager and dramaturg Philip Geisler talks with Prof. Dr. Wendy M. K. Shaw, a scholar of decolonial art history of Islamic cultures, about the history of mimesis in the Middle East and its connections with music and representation. They discuss how Rumi’s mirror became a paradigm for internal mimesis, why Plato was depicted as a star-watching musician in Islamic poetry, and how such premodern ideas of mimesis can break with modern cultural categories and serve decolonial artistic methods today.

This episode is released on the occasion of the Trickster Orchestra’s upcoming project Mimesis – Nothing is alien between us, premiering at Jazzfest Berlin on November 05, 2021.