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Mountain of Truth

(2022-23)

site-specific performance for directional speakers, quadraphonic installation and percussion

Program notes

The ‘aura’ of a place and how to engage with it creatively was one of the most present questions in my mind when facing the challenge of creating a site-specific work. In the case of Monte Verità, this will inextricably be connected to the Lebensreform community established by Ida Hofmann and Henri Oedenkoven in the early 1900s. They saw Ascona as a special place fit for their utopian vision, an oasis of health, happiness and virtue free from the excesses of the emerging industrial society. My proposed work aims to invoke the special, quasi-magical spirit of this place in the way that the Monte Verità founders may have felt it, creating an engaging space for the walking audience in which sound interacts with the natural environment and an immersive, magical and at times mysterious atmosphere is created.

Sound sources for the work include, amongst other things, manipulated recordings of the water tower, German radio excerpts and readings of Ida Hofmann’s texts.

Commissioned by Rümlingen Festival 2023, site-specific creation for the water tower behind the Monte Verità Hotel in Ascona (CH).

Duration: open

Instrumentation

Performer 1 [on the tower] – directional speaker, percussion*, control of patch

Performer 2 [on the tower] – directional speaker, percussion*

Performer 3 [hidden in the woods] – percussion*

Performer 4 [hidden in the woods] – percussion*

All dressed in plain white clothes

*All percussion consisting of resonant metal instruments (e.g. crotales, bells, gongs, temple bowls...)
 

Performance

29.07.2023 – Finisterre – Festival Rümlingen 2023, Monte Verità (Ascona, CH)

        Performers: José del Avellanal, Rina Roccasalva, Alberto Toccaceli, Daniele Dindo

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© 2023 José del Avellanal Carreño

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