FEAR OF MUSIC, TRUST IN TWELVE

During recording „Dream Exchanges – Fear of Music Trust in Twelve”, members of Jugendchor Canzonetta, Jazz-Institut Berlin, 2022
Production still by Hajnal Németh

Solo exhibition featuring the work „Dream Exchanges – Fear of Music Trust in Twelve” at EBENSPERGER Berlin in 2022.

„Dream Exchanges – Fear of Music, Trust in Twelve” (2022) is a two-channel video installation by Hajnal Németh, which draws on linguistic and musical elements and is based on collaborations in its realisation phases. Written for a twelve-member youth choir, the piece was performed by Canzonetta and some of the texts were written by the choir members themselves. The music for the long random poem was composed by Paul Brody.

The piece was constructed partly in the process of the performance based on pre-written compositional – linguistic and musical – elements, along with given rules and instructions. The final content and structure of the piece was determined by the innermost personal world of the performers on the one hand, and by chance placed on a mathematical basis on the other. 

In the prose part of the piece, titled „Dream Exchanges”, in roughly two-minute rounds, each member of the choir read out the dream of another choir member, the note of which was randomly assigned to them by digital redistribution. The content of this part was thus derived from absolutely personal inner psyches, which then became shared, or rather exchanged, worlds through identity exchanges.

The musical part of the piece is titled „Fear of Music, Trust in Twelve”, and it comprises the performance of a minimal and repetitive composition, a song made up of 144 lines. Each of the two-word lines of the long random lyrics is one of the 144 possible combinations of pairing 2 sets of 12 words. Their order was also decided by an algorithm. 

In the background of the piece performed, the privilege of the machine to rewrite man’s poem and even to detach the trace of the innermost psychic world of one person and transmit it to another at random, is thus definitely asserted.

The footages of the video installation are comprised by documentations of the studio recording sessions. 

A live version of the piece was performed at the opening of the exhibition. The openness of the structure allows each performer to convey a rearranged, new textual content. The dedicated lyrics rearranger is available online to anyone, and each version can be downloaded individually.

FEAR OF MUSIC, TRUST IN TWELVE – random lyrics

Hajnal Németh, „Fear of Music Trust in Twelve – Random Lyrics”, 2022, video installation, text animation, 4k
Installation views: „Fear of Music Trust in Twelve”, solo show at EBENSPERGER, Berlin, 2022
Photos by Ludger Paffrath

Hajnal Németh, „Dream Exchanges – Fear of Music Trust in Twelve”, 2022, two-channel video installation with quadraphonic sound, 4k
Installation views: „Fear of Music Trust in Twelve”, solo show at EBENSPERGER, Berlin, 2022
Photos by Ludger Paffrath

Trailer of the video installation:

Hajnal Németh, „Dream Exchanges – Fear of Music, Trust in Twelve”, 2022
Two-channel video installation with quadraphonic sound, 4k
Language: English, German
Written and directed by Hajnal Németh
Co-written and performed by the Jugendchor Canzonetta
Conducted by Toni Schmidt
Music composed by Paul Brody
Music played by and improvisational musical parts composed by Franz Bauer (marimba) and Lisa Hoppe (double bass)
Lyrics coding by András Szőnyi
Recorded in the studio of Jazz-Institut Berlin
Sound: Volker Greve
Cinematography: Mario Bergmann, Movinapes
Camera operator: Nay Aoun
Post-production: Greve Studio
Berlin, 2022

Realised with the support of: 
BBK-Bundesverband
Projektbüro NEUSTART für Bildende Künstlerinnen und Künstler
BKM – Die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien