Trojade – museum Boijmans van Beuningen
Art Brothers, performance, photo, video
When the city council of Amsterdam decided to build a huge city hall & opera building on the ruins of the old jewish quarter in the middle of the depression in the early 80’s there was a lot of resentment amongst the citizens of Amsterdam, there was a huge gap between the visions of the city council and the needs of the inhabitants of Amsterdam, people were leaving the city, squatters & riots everywhere. A group of artists wanted to make a statement and use the building excavation as a stage for a huge theatrical protest and asked us to make a special performance. Looking at freshly build opera stage in the middle of the ghostly contours of the excavation and rioting in the city we thought of the Roman emperor Nero composing music on his lyre while watching the city burn. We teamed up with Marian Teunissen and decided to perform on top of the excavation site as the three Nero’s playing on electric lyres while we would project flames on the Opera building. The whole project was cancelled when the squatters movement threatened to clime over the fences of the excavation site because they refused to understand that our theatre production was our way of protesting and big theatrical middle finger to the city council. The excavation site was 16 meters deep and very dangerous and we didn’t want anyone to get injured, so sadly that was the end of the Stopera project of the Stimmt foundation.
Peter and I were already working on the technical part of the electric lyres with the help of studio STEIM when the Stopera project was cancelled and decided to tune down our ambition and find an other stage for our lyres. For the performance at the Stopera (city hall + opera) we wanted to work with a large choir which we would divide in separate sections in sound proof glass boxes, every section of the choir would be connected with one string of the lyres, when playing a string you would hear the sound of one part of the choir singing one single tone, with 3 lyres and 12 strings we would be able to play minimal compositions and improvise with a whole choir. Without the funding for the Stopera project we had to tone down our performance, and record the voices for the strings instead of working with a live choir. We ended up singing the choir part ourselves at Moniek Toebosch basement which had the perfect echo for our recordings.
Trojade
performance: Paradiso, Amsterdam
performance: CIRCUS MAXIMVS – lustrum party Vinyl magazine – mc Vredenburg, Utrecht
performance: VPRO’s Jonge helden (Young Hero’s) – VPRO television
15 min. composition: de Wilde Wereld (the Wild World) – VPRO radio
live performance: Moniek Toebosch’ Bitte mein Schrei – radio 5
performance: Kunstdag Delft
performance: museum Boymans van Beuningen, Rotterdam
photo collage: Kunstuitleen, Amsterdam
video: Salvis Titolis