D-Es-C-H
1 channel video, 12:04min, loop, 16:9, stereo, color — 2022
Installation View: D-ES-C-H (2022), DSCH I+II, Gewandhaus zu Leipzig, Germany (2023). A group exhibition of the Expanded Cinema class by Clemens von Wedemeyer and Mareike Bernien in collaboration with the Gewandhaus zu Leipzig.
Video-Excerpt: D-Es-C-H 2022, 4K video, color, sound, 2:30 Min.
The video D-Es-C-H (2022) is inspired by the musical protest of Soviet Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich against repression under Joseph Stalin. As a performative, four-note piece, D-Es-C-H brings that protest into the present, where the practices of the Russian regime echo those of the past. Performed by a string quartet, four musicians play a recurring musical motif drawn from Shostakovich’s compositions.
The musical theme—and the title of the video piece—consists of the composer’s own initials, which he used as a personal cipher throughout his works to symbolically reference himself. These musical initials serve as coded sounds of resistance, through which Shostakovich negotiates in his music between adaptation and protest, between utopia and catastrophe.
In contrast to classical musical performance practice, the musicians move through a stairwell and develop the sound sequence performatively into the space by continuous repetition.
CREDITS
Concept: Katharina Bayer
1st
Violin: Sona Arzumanyan
2nd Violin: Nathalie Schmalhofer
Viola: Paula Mengel
Cello: Felicia Hamza
Camera: Jyrgen Ueberschär, Katharina Bayer
Editing: Katharina Bayer, Jyrgen Ueberschär
Sound: Toni Schlesinger
Technical Support: Carsten Möller