ACHT BRÜCKEN: Marlies Debacker | Ballet Mécanique & Jonas Engel | Afgrunden

Jonas Engel's older work "What the Wild flowers Witnessed" evokes memories of the song "Moaner" by Underworld from the 1997 Batman soundtrack and drives the listener forward. The trio put together especially for this occasion uses the juxtaposition of instruments and voice in a very similar way - but on a more equal footing. Musical spaces here range from the very intimate to the dramatic. It allows plenty of room for interpretation - in keeping with Urban Gad's "Abyss". The silent film from 1910 also juxtaposes large, free spaces with small, very regimented ones. The protagonist, a tutor, is courted by a pastor's son in Denmark at the time the film was made, when the circus is in town during a summer visit to her parents' vacation home. The plot opens up abysses between freedom, dependence, confinement and emotion. Whether these are ultimately overcome remains in the eye of the beholder. Engel's compositions make use of abysses and give listeners the opportunity to find their footing or lose themselves even more.

And "Ballet mécanique"? This French silent film, which is 15 years younger, is the first Dada film! Post-cubist and without any plot, we see all kinds of everyday objects such as pots or crockery, but abstracted in such a way that they no longer seem familiar, but rather appear as their form. A rhythmic interplay of objects, to which Marlies Debacker will create a non-placative background, in which composed, random and improvised sound actions overlap and invite us to discover our own connections in a multifaceted web of sound-image and sound-sound relationships. A work somewhere between musique concrète, musique concrète instrumentale, drones and pulsating textures.

These concerts are organized in cooperation with ACHT BRÜCKEN | Musik für Köln, the European Center for Jazz and Contemporary Music Stadtgarten Köln and NICA artist development.