The foothills of the Alps near Feldkirch/A, venue of the Montforter Zwischentöne classical music festival (Image: private)
Kick-off in Feldkirch
Project report on initial field research at the Montforter Zwischentöne in Feldkirch 2024
A central aim of the EcoLit project is to get to know artistic practices of musical and literary engagement with ecological crises in the field of informal cultural education and to research them through participant observation. The first opportunity for a research trip came shortly after the start of the project in April 2024 to the Montforter Zwischentöne in Feldkirch. Over two days, Tanya Gautam and Sara Walther visited the festival for classical music in Austria.
The reason for the visit was the HUGO Pitch 2024 – a university competition for new concert formats as part of the festival, which gives students the opportunity to develop and test concepts for new concert formats in front of an internationally renowned jury. In 2024, the competition was held under the motto “Me/We”. Four different ensembles from different universities presented their concert ideas in ten-minute short performances.
The cryptic ensemble from the Hamburg University of Music and Drama also took part, collaborating with Tanya Gautam on the topic of water, climate catastrophe and the associated feeling of powerlessness. The theme was approached in an audio-visual exploration of spoken word, video, free jazz, free improvisation and drum’n’bass. The central element was the musical staging of a wave that initially ripples gently, then increasingly rears up and develops destructive power until it finally breaks and, in a fading conciliatory phase, provides space for a shared processing of the experience.
The field research took the form of a duo ethnography with observation protocols, recorded conversations and open-narrative interviews with participants in the ensemble and other actors on site. The topic provided an impetus to deal with personal experiences such as flood disasters. The jury also praised the immersiveness of the concept, which created a dense dramaturgy by combining different disciplines and styles, making it possible to be “overwhelmed by the sound”.
For the EcoLit project, the field research was an impetus to reflect on how cultural educational contexts can create a space for sensitive topics such as personal experiences, attitudes and feelings in connection with ecological crises.
The performance by cryptic and Tanya Gautam can be found from minute 01:23:07 in the official video recording of Montforter Zwischentöne:
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