The timeless moment

How do we perceive music and what kind of associated images does it awaken in us? How are music - a non-conceptual art form - and images that arise when listening and composing, connected? The concert installation "The Timeless Moment" by director Silvia Costa and pianist and composer Alain Franco revolves around these questions. Sound events create a space that the audience can experience with all their senses. Costa and Franco essentially draw on works by two composers: Claude Debussy and Tristan Murail. While the impressionists around Debussy aimed to reproduce the subjective impression of external images in their works, the spectralist Murail focuses entirely on the music itself and uses its individual parameters to create multi-layered sound spaces that defy the prejudices of sight.

From various piano works by Debussy woven with Murail's"Territoires de l'oubli", Alain Franco creates a musical structure that forms the basis of the installation and which he will play himself on the piano during the performances. The only performer on stage will be a blind person. Her way of perceiving the sensations caused by listening to music is unique and unrepeatable. She senses more directly how other people feel joy, sadness or fear. Through this unique approachshe will bring the audience closer to her musical perception. The way in which this is done - verbally, gestically, choreographically, performatively – is far from any attempt of representation. It is just what is happening inside her in the present moment and it can be different any day.

Inspired by impressionist depictions of large lily pad lakes, the installation also uses water, a mobile element without a defined form, whose dark surface and color, as an inverted mirror of the outside, change depending on the music, temperature fluctuations and light effects. The audience is invited to question the way they receive music, to ask themselves if leaving the evening something has changed inside them.