“RECHT. Ökonomien des Handelns 2” (LAW. Economies of Action 2) is the second music theatre piece of a three-part project series in which experimental film-maker Daniel Kötter and composerHannes Seidl focus on the general conditions of social action. The duo has been working together since 2008, experimenting with forms of documentary storytelling in the film and music genres.
“RECHT” broaches the question of how spatial planning and borders shape the legal system. In an experimental set-up, two groups work on the creation of regulatory systems: in the film a group of six lawyers and NGO workers can be seen discussing, arguing, dancing and celebrating. They are situated on a Mosel region island in noman’s land near the small town of Schengen in Luxemburg. Three decades after the first Schengen Agreement they ask themselves how law could secure justice at a global level. Their assignment: to create a new, transnational law that satisfies the requirements of traditional national legal practice and, at the same time, acknowledges new, global demands. Kötter and Seidl launched this unusual “Republic of Scholars” in the late summer of 2014 and accompanied them over 24 hours with a camera and a microphone. Soloists from theEnsemble NADAR accompanied the thinkers on the island in the form of a “festive orchestra” and sonic confrontation.
Live, on stage, the group of Ensemble NADAR musicians operates – in analogy to the island − within its own system of rules spanning improvisation, screen and concert space: experimental documentary film and live concert move closer together, duplicate, accompany and comment on one another and let territorial conditions of law and music become a concrete reflexion and experience about the complex phenomenon of law in an interplay of all levels.