MEDIATHEK

In a 100 austere, transparent sculptures, earth seems to float, a soldiers' graveyard in a chilling landscape. From the earth, sounds arise. Noise, rustling, echos from the war but also voices and shreds of music. In Field Recordings, artist A. De Causmaecker and composer A. Van Parys search for the universal emotions behind a war. The texts are specially written for the installation by P. Verhelst.

War is destruction. Always and everywhere. Torn-apart landscapes, ruptured bodies, fear, pain, death. But always there are survivors, who search for a new beginning amidst the debris.

Slowly they rebuild what was destroyed in no time. Life recovers, but lacunas remain, emptyness filled with absence. Consolation is hard to find, but somewhere, deep down, hope is still glowing. The Great War is the clay, which absorbed everything and where everything ended. The earth remembers the violence of war. The boys who died and were burried in it, their mothers who cried here.

De Causmaecker built an installation with 100 small speakers which interact from within the earth with the movements of a dancer. Roel Das took care of the complex technical realisation. Tracking cameras follow dancers movements scrupulously and let the soundscape interact with her presence. Sometimes the music persues her, sometimes it leaves her abruptly. The sculpture is a living and moving field of sound that responds to her movements. But at the same time it also is an instrument, that enters into dialogue with mezzo E. Mondelaers through Van Parys' music. In three laments and a litany for voice, saxophone and Percussion, she explores the big emotions behind the war. Slowly, the soldiers' graveyard from WWI morphs into a graveyard for all victims of all wars that came after the one that should have been the last. The war that would end wars…

Gradually the concrete setting fades away until only universal emotions remain. Because what is war but fear and destruction, after which we have to get up again and learn to live with the loss?

Because hope is always stronger.

After the performance, Field Recordings is also accessable for the public; the installation enters into a dialogue with the audience that walks in between the boxes. Just like the wounds of war never fully dissapear from the landscape and the craters and soldiers' graveyards will forever be part of Flanders' Fields, the people walking between the graves of the installation will hear the voices of the past rise up from the earth.