TOXIC DREAMS - Morton Feldman Says

Thu 2. Feb. 2017 - 19.30 TQW / Halle G Foyer
Fri 3. Feb. 2017 - 19.30 TQW / Halle G
Sat 4. Feb. 2017 - 19.30 TQW / Halle G

TOXIC DREAMS (AT)
Morton Feldman Says

Premiere / TQW co-production

Morton Feldman was a “big, rough Jewish lad from Queens”, the son of a manufacturer of children’s coats, whose business he worked in until the age of 44. Later he became professor of music at the State University of New York and one of the most important composers of the 20th century. An unconventional artist who opened up the broad, quiet, painfully beautiful worlds of sound. Above and beyond that he was one of the most brilliant speakers in the recent history of the city of New York, a trenchant theoretician and a rhetorician with a great love of discourse who was closely associated with the abstract expressionists.
In Morton Feldman Says, Toxic Dreams get Feldman the thinker to speak. In the spatial design of secular spirituality inspired by the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas, the master shares his views on music, art, work, history and living with a questioning chorus and the audience.

In a paraphrased form Martin Siewert’s music refers to the structural and technical characteristics of Feldman’s music, takes account of parameters such as reduction, repetition, slowed down development scenarios and analytical “coolness”. But it then also increasingly counteracts this with rhythmically eruptive material whose points of reference and very direct, intensive, sometimes even controversial nature rather come from Feldman’s articles and rhetorical digressions, which are characterised by great spontaneity, a love of surprising and often controversial responses and turns, great pleasure in the direct, dialogic-dialectical “exchange of blows” with his discursive counterparts, and not least by great wit and humour.

#RhetoricalExcursus #Clash #Exchange #Chorus #dialogical-dialectical

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MORTON FELDMAN: Markus Zett
CHOR DER BEFRAGTEN: Susanne Gschwendtner, Anna Mendelssohn, Anat Stainberg, Yosi Wanunu
KOMPOSITION: Martin Siewert
LIVE MUSIK: Martin Siewert (Gitarre + Electronics), Christian Weber (Doublebass)
VISUALS: Michael Strohmann;
REGIE + DESIGN: by Yosi Wanunu
PRODUKTION: Kornelia Kilga
TEXT: Morton Feldman
(The Darmstadt lecture, 1984; Weitere Quelle: Diverse Interviews die Feldman über die Jahre gegeben hat)

Susanne Gschwendtner was born in Austria and studied acting at East 15 Acting School in London. After working with Ken Campbell and completing various theatre work across the UK, she moved to Israel, where she focused mainly on international film acting. In 2011 she moved back to Vienna, where she developed her own one-woman-show The Photographer, a piece about her time in Israel. Susanne is best known for her role as Queen Ralia in ABC’s The Quest, a TV series by the producer of The Lord of the Rings. In 2014 she performed in the critically acclaimed play The Flood by Badac Theatre at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Susanne’s recent theatre work in Vienna includes The Mechanical Paradise and Thomas B or not, both with Toxic Dreams, as well as Die Räuber at Werk X. Latest TV and film credits include ORF’s Tatort, Der Tote am Teich and Stefan Ruzowitzky’s Die Hölle as well as the female lead in the Israeli movie Resignation, which will première next year. www.susannegschwendtner.com

Anna Mendelssohn studied acting in the UK. Since 2004 she has been a member of the Vienna-based theatre company Toxic Dreams and has performed in over 25 of their productions. She has also worked with numerous other directors and choreographers such as David Mayaan (Schauspielhaus Wien), André Turnheim (Landestheater Linz), Superamas and others. In her own works she explores parallels between private-individual and global-political events such as climate change, war, love, the future and economics. She is especially interested in the role of language and rhetoric. Her works include Cry Me A River (2010), which received the actor’s prize at the Impulse Festival 2011 and the jury prize and co-production prize at the Arena Festival 2010. www.annamendelssohn.net

Martin Siewert, born in 1972, lives and works in Vienna. Martin works as a guitarist and improviser, but also as a composer in acoustic and/or electronic contexts. Numerous collaborations and compositions for theatre, dance and film. Current projects and bands include Radian (with Martin Brandlmayr and John Norman), Trapist (with Martin Brandlmayr and Joe Williamson, Fake the Facts (with dieb13 and Mats Gustafsson, The Peeled Eye (with Boris Hauf, Steve Heather and Christian Weber). www.siewert.klingt.org

Anat Stainberg studied theatre, film and anthropology at Tel Aviv University and acting at the Yoram Levinstein acting school in Tel Aviv. She participated in numerous theatre and film productions, performing for the Israeli TV and theatre stages until 2004. She then moved to Europe and graduated from DasArts in Amsterdam. Today she lives and works in Vienna, teaching in the performative arts department of the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. Her work has been presented internationally in galleries, museums and theatres, such as Brut Wien, Kunstraum Niederoesterreich, the Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam, De Apple Gallery, Amsterdam, the Frascati Theatre, Amsterdam, Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus,Wien Modern i.a With Toxic Dreams she performed in The Circus of Life A - Z and in Thomas B. or Not. http://anat.klingt.org

Michael Strohmann is a composer and media artist. He studied computer science at the Vienna University of Technology and computer music and electronic media at the University for Music and Applied Art in Vienna. He is a bassist and composer in the group Fuckhead, with which he has played in numerous concerts and performances at home and abroad and published several recordings. Conception of sound installations and new music series. Michael is a permanent ensemble member of Toxic Dreams, he has composed music for many productions and is also Toxic Dreams’ video and computer expert. He won the Diagonale 04 prize for innovative cinema.

Yosi Wanunu was born and grew up in Akko/Israel. Yosi studied history of art, film and theatre studies in Israel, Europe and the USA. He has travelled widely, learning specific theatre and film techniques and styles. Before settling in Austria he worked for eight years as director, writer and stage/lighting designer in NYC, inter alia at the BCBC, Ohio Theatre, La Mama ETC and with Richard Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric Theatre. Yosi is co-founder and artistic director of the Vienna-based performance group Toxic Dreams. Since 1998 he has created around 60 productions with Toxic Dreams, most recently The Circus of Life A - Z, The Mechanical Paradise, Thomas B. or Not. He works with several other performers, groups and art institutions in Europe. www.toxicdreams.at

Markus Zett, born in1973, actor, performer, improviser, author, director. He has been creating performances for classical stage settings and urban spaces since the mid-1990s, the majority of them with Theaternyx, the label he founded and co-directs with Claudia Seigmann. Associate member of Toxic Dreams since 2014. Recent works include Yosi Wanunu’s high-wire screwball comedy Thomas B. or Not (brut, September 2016) and Jérôme Bel’s Viennese version of Gala (TQW, January and October 2016). www.markuszett.com