• At Unsound Krakow // Photo by Theresa Baumgartner

EPHEMERA Live

Ephemera Live is a multi-sensory piece, stimulating not only audio-visually, but also olfactory.
Crossing the border between live performance and installation, this 45-minute show takes the concept to the level. The audience enters a room filled with fog. It is unclear where the front, back or side is, let alone the point from where the artists perform – feelings of disorientation, mystery and euphoria are evoked.
Encircling the audience space, Marcel Weber has set up a strip of surrounding lights, which he plays pattern on illuminating the fog. The smell of Geza Schoen’s Drone scent also fills the space. There are no chairs, the audience is free to move around rather than stand in one place, creating a dynamic, sensual hub. In this atmosphere and exposed to Tim Hecker's surreal music a state of dream and introspection is conjured.

This synesthetic show might bring up connections with the works of James Turell, Olafur Eliasson as well as La Monte Young’s legendary Dream House installation – yet it is also absolutely original.

The Ephemera project is curated by Malgorzata Plysa and Mat Schulz.

PRESS ON "EPHEMERA LIVE"

It took a room and turned it into a cloud. [..] vivid tone colors seemed a perfect match for the pink-into-red-into-blue play of the lights. Towards the climax, the strobes sped up—overwhelming and calming all at once. If you’d ever wanted to feel like there was nothing around you but sound and light, this was as close as you were going to get.” –
Philip Sherburne, Pitchfork

„Ephemera is truly, unequivocally original — a sensory performance on a whole new level.” – Daryl Keating, Exclaim

„We might have been staring at the moon, or a mountain, or a musician from LA unable to see if anyone came to his gig. Nothing was certain. Upon exiting, a common emotion inspired by Dark Mofo took root for the first of many times: re-entering the real world felt alarmingly disappointing.” – Marcus Teague, Broadsheet

PAST PERFORMANCES

19th June 2015 - The Hearn, Luminato / Unsound Toronto, CA
16th Oct 2015 - Unsound Festival Krakow, PL
15th May 2016 - MONA, Dark Mofo Festival, Hobart, AUS

Synesthesia, total immersion, dazzlement of the senses — these are the basic tropes from which I started to develop the circle of LED lights surrounding the audience, forming a ring of light, some kind of infinite horizon. With the space filled by intense haze those lights materialize in seemingly solid colour, while the sense of depths and the experience of orientation are greatly reduced.

Additionally I wrote a software to generate light and colour, based on harmonic waves and organic Perlin noise. During performance I play this software via Midi controllers only, keeping the computer screen black most of the time; haptically and intuitively.
Light travels the surrounding circle, forming fields of colour in the haze – ever flowing, rhythmic, in constant motion, sometimes flickeringly fast, sometimes slow on the edge of unnoticeable.

In unison with the music and triggered by the olfactory memory imagery from the depth of collective subconscious is recalled: red morning sun, the shimmering sea, Alpine glow, crystal caves, Aurora Boreales, day-night-cycles,  ...
A space for introspection is evoked. –m