Sensual Prelude: Mahler’s ‘The Song of the Earth’ Transformed into Visual Installations at Train Stations

For Deutsche Bahn’s “Station to Station” project, the scenographers from chezweitz interpreted Gustav Mahler’s “The Song of the Earth” in their own unique way. This can now be experienced at various train stations.

If Gustav Mahler When he returned to Germany from the New York Metropolitan Opera in 1908, a difficult time began for him. His young daughter died, he was subjected to an anti-Semitic campaign and suffered from heart disease that would lead to his early death a few years later.

During this time he wrote the symphonic cycle »The Song of the Earth«, which can be read as an allegory of transience.

As part of the multi-year project “Station to Station”, chezweitz’s office for museum and urban scenography from Berlin reinterpreted Mahler’s cycle in six train stations.

The »Sensual Prelude« emerged, an »artistic-holographic intervention«, as Chezweitz calls it, which translates Mahler’s music into a visual experience.

And all in one Video workwhich Detlef Weitz and the video artist Stefan Hurtig developed together with the director of the Hamburger Symphoniker, Daniel Kühnel, and the curator Dorothée Brill.

Image: ©chezweitz GmbH & Stefan Hurtig

The installations are individually adapted to the respective station and the music and leave the stations intense as if out of nowhere bright and at the same time fleeting images are created that float freely in space like holograms and follow the dramaturgy of the music.

Images of nature and the body, plants, insects, sea creatures, limbs and faces appear, transform and fall apart, only to be reassembled again. At the same time they are historical Fotomaterial through which refers to the respective location.

Let the images emerge 3D hologram projectorswhich work similarly to fans, as von chezweitz says, and make the image loops visible through “holocircles”.

Installation will continue until September 15, 2023 Bahnhof Oldenburg on view until September 17th Hamm train stationam Halle station until September 19th, on Weimar train station until September 21st, on Bahnhof Heidelberg until September 24th and on the Freiburg train station from September 29th to October 15th, 2023.

Image: ©chezweitz GmbH & Stefan Hurtig Image: ©chezweitz GmbH & Stefan Hurtig Image: ©chezweitz GmbH & Stefan Hurtig

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2023-09-14 05:36:59
#Music #Holograms #Deutsche #Bahn