Wednesday 4 June 2014

Boheme2020 at Dresden Music Festival

Gläserne Manufaktur (Transparent Factory) in Dresden
Die Gläserne Manufaktur (Transparent Factory) in Dresden
Whilst I was in Dresden visiting the music festival (see my reviews and interview), I was able to go to the press launch for the festival's Boheme2020 project. The festival's artistic director Jan Vogler has developed an idea which is intended to give young artists a platform in the festival whilst enabling them to work in a way that is freer than the highly structured events in the regular festival. Eight young artists working in variety of different media were brought together and during the festival and given free range to come up with ideas. The artists had not met before the festival and were all being housed together, living collectively (hence the project's name). On 28 May, at Volkswagen's Die Gläserne Manufaktur (Transparent Factory) in Dresden, Vogler and the artists introduced themselves to the press and presented ideas for their final project (on June 3).

The project is being supported the the Stiftung Kunst und Musik für Dresden, a foundation which supports contemporary art in Dresden. The foundation has not only been involved in choosing the artists involved, but also facilitating contacts with other artists.

One artist, violinist Caroline Goulding from Boston, was not able to be there but the other seven introduced themselves personally. Dancer Marita Matzk is a choreographer from Dresden and she talked about the way they all came from different disciplines, exploring the different crossing points between discipline and how everybody brought something to the process and created magic. Altamasch Noor and Carolin Wedler are actors from Hamburg who trained together, they were finding it fascinating working with artists of other genres. They found that there was so much to do on the project that they couldn't go to festival events. For them the project involved two distinct elements showing themselves on stage and networking with other artists.

Raquel Garcia Tomas talking to Jan Vogler at the Boheme2020 press conference
Raquel Garcia Tomas talking to Jan Vogler at the press conference

Raquel Garcia Tomas is a composer from Barcelona who is currently based on London and researching multidisciplinary communication. She works with dancers and with video and focusses on mixes of disciplines and recent projects have included work with the English National Ballet using electronic music. She is using electronic music for the project, recording the sounds at the factory and the final performance will be taking place there.

Teresa Hahl is a poet from Bochum (in the Ruhr). She acted as the narrator in the group's first project which was a staging of Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale and she found it a unusual having to read text by other people being used to working with her own texts. She found being thrown into a crowd very inspiring, but also neeed space. Judith Michael is a video and multimedia artist from Dresden. She was planning a light installation for the Transparent Factory and presented her initial plans. The sponsorship from the foundation has meant she could work with light equipment which was very expensive. (You can see a video of the light show on the Dresden Music Festival's Facebook Page)




Chou Tung-Yen is a theatre and film director, and installation artist from Taiwan. He is interested in the relationship between video, environment and space. The brought a small helicopter camera to the project and demonstrated some preliminary footage, more of which will be in the final project.

The artists were based at the Transparent Factory, where their final performance will be. Volkswagen are being keen to be open and involved and Chou Tung-Yen commented that the factory is almost like a stage set. The group's performance is planned for 3 June 2014 at the Transparent Factory.

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