in danger as a whole is a video installation commissioned by the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam, Gaudeamus in Utrecht and Musica in Strasbourg. The work is part of the project The State of Music, inviting 17 composers to reflect on Louis Andriessen’s composition De Staat by writing a single page of instructions or graphic score. This page then is to be executed in order to create a performative exhibition next to the concert of De Staat, presented in the three venues in September 2024.
De Staat is inspired by Plato’s The Republic, with Andriessen using text excerpts as lyrics for his composition. I borrowed a phrase from one of these excerpts to give the title to my work. The video content depicts a speaker on a tripod playing De Staat in three locations: a piece of farmland in the Netherlands among energy windmills, a construction site of a building in Athens that was never finished and is planned to become an institution, and a venue in my hometown Larissa which is being built and rebuilt for about 25 years. The installation includes an actual speaker on a tripod playing the audio part opposite the video screen, letting the two speakers create their own dialogue with the audience standing in-between.
ὡς ἐν ὅλῳ κινδυνεύοντα / in danger as a whole / en danger dans son ensemble
By Plato’s Republic:
μὴ πολλάκις τὸν ποιητήν τις οἴηται λέγειν οὐκ ᾄσματα νέα ἀλλὰ τρόπον ᾠδῆς νέον, καὶ τοῦτο ἐπαινῇ. δεῖ δʼ οὔτʼ ἐπαινεῖν τὸ τοιοῦτον οὔτε ὑπολαμβάνειν. εἶδος γὰρ καινὸν μουσικῆς μεταβάλλειν εὐλαβητέον ὡς ἐν ὅλῳ κινδυνεύοντα· οὐδαμοῦ γὰρ κινοῦνται μουσικῆς τρόποι ἄνευ πολιτικῶν νόμων τῶν μεγίστων (…)
out of fear that some often suppose that the poet is speaking not of new songs but of a new style of singing, and that he is expressing group approval for such a thing – but this should neither be praised nor accepted. In fact, one must be careful about changing to a new musical form, on the grounds that it puts everything in danger as a whole. Musical styles never change without modifying the most important political laws too (…)
What are a state’s institutions?
What is their sound?
What is the sound of their absence or collapse, the sound of their construction?
Who is watching, who is listening, who is making decisions?
Those who watch and listen decide to make their way to the institution, to the concert hall, to the theater; they decide to come together. By being present with their bodies in the building, they already complete a political gesture. I use the term political as in Greek language, where πολίτης (polítis) is the citizen and the word πόλις (pólis) means city, arriving to Πολιτεία (Politía) by Plato, which deals with the ways a city-state should be governed.
The work manifests through De Staat by Louis Andriessen, displacing space, time and potentially the audience itself. It creates a line of thoughts starting from the venue as an existing institution, imagining the building as its very body, passing through a future institution under construction and making the trip till the farmland that surrounds the city; a countryside world that keeps the city alive and which in times of neglection has the potential power to block or even demolish its institutions.
Presentations:
4 Sep Gaudeamus, TivoliVredenburg, Utrecht
12 Sep Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam
20 Sep Festival Musica, Maillon, Strasbourg
Special thanks for the production of the work to the Muziekgebouw & their amazing team, Gaudeamus, Festival Musica Strasbourg, Perfoming Arts Fund NL, Onassis Culture, Thessaliko Theatre, Municipality of Larissa, Yannis Michalopoulos, Fotini Papachristopoulou, Nikos Karatzios, Kostas Chaikalis, Dimitris Tasenas, Niki Skiadaresi, Konstantinos Melidis, Alexios Papazacharias, Yorgos Samaras, Yorgos Deligiannis, Trevor Grahl.