An overwhelming audiovisual spectacle about how the avant-garde of the twentieth century predicted the ecological themes of the 21st century.
HERMESensemble presents BALLET MECANIQUE by the American 'bad boy of music' George Antheil in confrontation with the film of the same name by Fernand Léger and Man Ray. Film and music were created seperately in the 1920s, but are shown here as a whole. The music and images together form an exuberant and pleasantly disturbed prophecy about industrial violence and derailed exploitation of fossil fuels in a surrealistic setting.
DESERTS (1950) by Edgar Varèse is one of the key works that determined the music history of the second half of the twentieth century. The masterpiece refers not only to the physical deserts of sand, sea, snow, immeasurrable space, but also to an inner emptiness, to the loneliness of modern man. the american video artist Bill Viola presented this icon of the musical avant-garde in a stunning way in 1994 with a film, which can't be shown live with the music.