Crippled Symmetries – A Journey

In the Taiwanese dialect Hokkien, GUA simply means “song.” Based on two poems by Hu Chang-sung (Oo Tiong-siong), Fang-Yi Lin's composition highlights the suppressed languages of Taiwan, which were banned from public life after World War II until 1990. This situation initially created a challenge for the composer to read poems or novels written in Hokkien using Chinese characters. Eventually, she managed to understand them by reading aloud and listening, an experience she translated into song. For GUA, Fang-Yi Lin uses Western and traditional percussion instruments as well as a Taiwanese children’s song – “like a small island that carries the cultures and languages of many communities that were forced to hide.”

Norwegian composer and interdisciplinary artist Tine Surel Lange engages in an intense exploration of the relationship between humans and nature, as well as the myths and stories that this complex relationship produces. In Apotheosis, the haunting visual impressions of a sublime Arctic beach intertwine with the myth of Odin, considered to be omniscient an holding a position above all gods. In her investigations of humanity’s “ever-growing god complex”, Lange combines visual material and musical movements with personal memories along with a search for the eternal.

In Nomenclature of Colours, Argentine composer AnA Maria Rodriguez develops nuanced associations of timbre. Based on research by geologist Abraham Gottlob Werner and images by Scottish botanical illustrator Patrick Syme, she translates the 110 shades of colour that Werner observed in animate and inanimate nature into a sound performance. The audience is encouraged to explore the finest tonal and visual shifts, while the intense spectral sounds and the subtly tuned light effects create a ritualistic space.

In ...a drop on my fingers, two lips as a fuzz, a sun on our heads (is the pattern), Greek composer Zesses Seglias deals with sonic impressions at the edge of human comprehension, “just as the sun lies beyond the universe and sound fades above our heads.” The centre of his composition is shaped by a harmonically complex and resonant sound. Its spectral elements are explored in fine, narrow circles, creating a circular structure inherent to the piece. At certain moments, time seems to stand still, then metaphorical windows open, where the lights of memory shine through and leave their traces.