»L‘ORIGINE« – Eine Lautmalerei   |   length: 51 minutes

Loosely based on Antonin Artaud’s manifesto “Art and Death”

 

L’Origine, these are paintings that merge into a liquid image. Words that combine to form a metaphysical text. Saxophone sounds that balance on image and text. Finally, the human being - voice, movement, breath - who unites everything.

The audience experiences L’Origine as a “fascinating work of art” that cannot be assigned to any form. “A concert? A performance? A picture exhibition? Everything.” “A secret door into another world. Worth hearing, worth seeing, worth experiencing.”

Peter Hölscher: Idea, painting, liquid image
Roger Hanschel: Composition, saxophone, electronics
Barbara Schachtner: Performance, voice, sound art
Dorothee Pilavas: Text composition

 

We perform L'Origine in exciting spaces away from the classical stages. Atmosphere, acoustics and the positioning of the audience influence the overall work of art. Each performance becomes unique.

For a performance in your place contact us here: info@peter-hoelscher.de

 

Idea and Genesis

Antonin Artaud's manifesto "Art and Death" forms the basis of L'Origine. Artaud about his work: "I want to write a book that confuses people, that is like an open door and that leads them where they would never have consented to go, a door that is simply connected to reality."

 

 

Painting - Liquid Image - Text Composition

With L'Origine, video artist Peter Hölscher is picking up where his painterly work left off. He separates out the pages of the book, paints them in mixed media and composes a Liquid Image from the digitised images. This video of infinitely slowly merging images leads the viewer into a never-before-seen world of intense colours and constantly changing forms that arrange themselves into mysterious shapes and dissolve again.

The Liquid Image, in which Artaud's text can only be suspected, symbolises for Dorothee Pilavas the place where life and death unite in an infinite cycle - the origin of everything: L'Origine. She brings back Artaud's text by assembling randomly selected words from the painted book pages into a poem and translating it back into French. This metaphysical text has a much stronger effect through its sound and rhythm than through its content.

Sound composition – Performance

Inspired by the Liquid Image and the new text, Roger Hanschel composes a piece for soprano and saxophone, which he gives the title "Balance". From this he develops the overall setting of the 51-minute Liquid Image, which maintains its intangible tension even in the quietest passages. His improvisation of melodic forms, rhythmic patterns and harmonic structures tells its own story - from tender poetry to powerful drama.

In dialogue with Barbara Schachtner, an onomatopoeia of partly electronically distorted voice colours, words, body sounds and polychrome saxophone sounds emerges. Voice and instrument flow together into a floating sonic image. Finally, Barbara Schachtner enters the Liquid Image in a balancing shadow play and lets the painted book pages wave through the image. In this way, Artaud's work also physically returns to the viewer's perception.

 

Ensemble L’Origine

Text - Image - Sound - Body

Four artists unite their creativity in one work: text, image, sound, body - each part of it composed independently - interact and stimulate each other. In a communication that activates all senses, the four enhance their ideas. They pass through minds and hearts in constant flux - a process of perpetual transformation on a common wave. The collaboration of the Ensemble L'Origine takes place in playful ease and great mutual openness and appreciation.

 

Roger Hanschel, Barbara Schachtner, Dorothee Pilavas, Peter Hölscher (f.l.t.r.)

 

Peter Hölscher: With L'Origine, the video artist Peter Hölscher is picking up where his painterly work left off. The book pages of Artaud's work “Art and Death”, which he has painted in mixed media, form the starting point for his Liquid Image. The image composition leads the viewer into an underwater world full of fantastic creatures, into the depths of the sea - to the origin of life. L'Origine premiered on 9 September 2022 in Hölscher's studio in the Reuschenberger Mühle in Leverkusen, Germany. Here he also works on sound sculptures as well as video-sound installations with the artist group Area Composer.

Roger Hanschel: The saxophonist and composer Roger Hanschel is certainly one of the most versatile saxophonists of contemporary music. 70 of his numerous compositions have now been released on over 40 CDs. His setting of L'Origine gives Hölscher's images a liveliness and a voice through which they get into direct contact with the viewer. Composition and improvisation merge in a flow of endless tonal and percussive ideas. With circular breathing and digital equipment, Hanschel creates a deeply emotional, suspenseful sound space. L'Origine is not the first collaboration between the two artists.

Barbara Schachtner: The singer and performer Barbara Schachtner is involved in a wide range of international collaborations across all branches of the arts: from classical chamber music formations to music theatre productions and video works to performative exhibitions and acts. Recently, she has increasingly been creating sound collages from which sound stories develop. With vocal presence and clarity, with playfully alienated onomatopoeia, in fact with the entire sound and silhouette of her body, she creates the poetic space of L'Origine.

Dorothee Pilavas: The texter and conceptual designer Dorothee Pilavas is active in many artistic fields. As part of the artist group Area Composer, she realises audio-visual installations in public spaces. In various jazz formations, she creates diverse timbres and emotions with bass clarinet and saxophone. Both in her music and in her lyrics, she is always keen to bring stories to life. For L'Origine, she creates a text that takes Artaud's words and places them in a new, onomatopoeic context. A text that can be perceived with all the senses.