φeerroom
Interactive room and sound installation (2022)
concept, curation, realization, scenography, performance, sound:
the paranormal φeer group (Jakob Boeckh & Maria Huber & Eloain Lovis Hübner)
feat. Nathalie Schatz
with guest performances by φriends:
AUЯA, Johannes Schropp, Trond Reinholdtsen, Miguel Ángel García Martín, Olivia Schrøder, Johanna Winkler, Johannes Speh
premiere: April 7-10, 2022, SPARK Festival für aktuelles Musiktheater, Alte Feuerwache Cologne
further openings: May 13-15, 2022, 49h Stimme X Festival, LICHTHOF Theater Hamburg
Commissioned by the festivals SPARK and Stimme X in the context of the HK-X cooperation, funded by the Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media in the context of NEUSTART KULTUR.
For the two newly founded festivals for independent music theater, SPARK Cologne and Stimme X Hamburg, the paranormal φeer group developed a “concept room”, which was free to visit during both festivals. The φeerroom is at once a spatial installation, an interactive sound space, a stage for spontaneous performances by paranormal φeers & φriends, a workshop space, a live circuit center, and a place for encounters. As a link between the artistic and the theoretical festival programs, the installation thinks further about the emerging questions and discourses and enters into creative contact with them. The φeerroom thereby becomes a playful laboratory for various discourse formats, a lively rehearsal place for different approaches to what “(independent) music theater” can mean today, and last but not least ensures continuity between the two collaborating festivals.
From the Hamburg opening speech:
“The φeerroom is one of the best inventions, one of the best institutions ever, because it is a room which …
… endures and focuses ambiguities and contradictions,
… thinks art and discourse inseparably together and sometimes staples them together somewhat waywardly,
… takes up possibilities, forwards possibilities, concentrates possibilities, reinforces possibilities and creates possibilities,
… curates according to its very own standards and, despite the greatest curational care, is absolutely unpredictable,
… united the outside with the inside, sensation with expression, image with frame, reception with creation, work with pleasure.
The φeerroom is a large projection screen, a battle painting, a living desert, an Antarctic, a Moon, a cold buffet, a jukebox, a laboratory, a kitchen, an experiment. It only functions if you yourself inhabit it and become active in it. For this, our thanks go to you: for what already is, and for what is to come, for the fold of time in which both, in which everything conincides and becomes one big thing, a whole, a parallel universe. Welcome to the φeerroom!”