Wiener Festwochen 2020 in cooperation with czirp czirp – experimental and sonic arts.
Live stream June 6th 2020, Meidlinger Platzl, 1120 Vienna.
Due to Covid-19, Afternoon of a Faun, initially conceived by us for Theresienbad Meidling, moved about the district and morphed into a different shape.
Commissioned by the Wiener Festwochen to curate an event within their program on June 6th, czirp czirp has invited The Construction Choir Collective to explore public spaces through musical intervention.
Engaging and recontextualizing the mythological figure of the faun, the Collective’s performance unites traditional and experimental forms of singing with other performative practices, giving way to alternative perceptions of artistic spatial situations and everyday life situations.
Production: Lisa Shchegolkova, Peter Walz
Dramaturgy: Bernhard Staudinger
Camera: Georg Eisnecker, Celalettin “Jimmy” Er, Szymon Olszowski
Leitung Videotechnik: Gert Tschuden
THE AFTERNOON OF A FAUN
Referencing the faun as a playful hybrid being who is tempted by Eros, the initial event for Theresienbad aimed to reinterpret one of modernity’s most important musical and performative works: L’Après-midi d’un faune (1867) by Stéphane Mallarmé. Following a feminist and ecological ideal, we engage this mythological figure diffractively and renew its form through the inversion of gender and social roles, as well as a strong emphasis on the processes of becoming and states of being an animal. In the spirit of Donna Haraway’s “making kin”, we encourage the audience to walk away with a heightened ecological awareness regarding all species, and contribute to a modern, re-configurated morphology of the faun.
Initially selected artists: Alexander Zehetbauer (USA/AT), Construction Choir Collective (Intl./Vienna), synchron swimmers group QueerH2O (Intl./Vienna) and the ensemble Airborne Extended (AT)