Walking in the limits

About the disintegration of a relationship

Walking in the limits is a multilayer piece by Swiss artist Heinz Reber. It includes the composer’s Berliner Cantos as well as his Strings and Superstrings. The three monologically designed Cantos (Woman, Man, Visitor) deal with the disintegration of a relationship against the background of the also disintegrating German Democratic Republic. The musical setting is made up by Reber’s composition Strings and Superstrings which is based on the superstring theory, a hypothesis in theoretical physics. According to this theory, the smallest particles of our universe are not spots but vibrating strings in a multi-dimensional universe. The resulting “cosmic symphony”, as Reber calls it, is taken up and reflected in his composition for three strings. In the combination of live produced music and various independent recordings of strings the artist finds a means of expressing the multi-dimensionality of strings.

Stars on stage

German film director Frank Krug (having collaborated with Reber before) has combined the various elements into an overall whole. Australian architect and media artist Lawrence Wallen has designed a space simulation. Viviane de Muynck will play the part of the annoyed woman at the side of André Jung as the doubtful man. David Benent, as an impulsive, absent-minded “visitor” intrudes into the (relationship) space of the couple. The action will be accompanied by three top-class soloists: Charlotte Hug (viola), Maya Homburger (violin) and Barry Guy (bass).

Walking in the limits is a homogenic artistic work made of sound, words and space, dealing with the understanding of space and time in a very existential sense: it reflects upon perception and illumines the structures of individual memory. Walking the limits seems like a timeless, unleashed, multi-dimensional, floating artistic work, in which the virtual and the real are entangled in manifold ways; an artistic work that is more easily comprehended emotionally than intellectually.
from: Isabell Hemmel, Walking in the limits, in: Tagesanzeiger Zürich, 17-8-2006