Cisternerne and Strøm present the audiovisual performance OPLØSNING by August Rosenbaum and Ea Verdoner: A three-hour experience combining live-concert, sound installation, performance and video in the underground space of Cisternerne.
In this special event Cisternerne provides the setting for the latest piano composition by the internationally acclaimed composer August Rosenbaums, staged as an audiovisual performance.
Over the course of five months, Rosenbaum has let a piano gradually dissolve in the humidity of the former water reservoir. The audience will experience how a familiar musical instrument is transformed into a sonic sculpture in decay, where all sound ideals collapse: A shattered soundbox where the wood is cracked, and mold and moisture have taken hold.
As an award-winning composer with almost twenty years of experience, he is very familiar with the piano and completely at home in concert halls and sound studios, but in Cisternerne, he wanted to explore the unknown and experiment with the effect of the water reservoir on the instrument. He wanted to accentuate the quietly destructive energy of the space – but quickly realized that the climate of Cisternerne was more powerful than expected.
OPLØSNING is a time-based composition including the sound of the instrument's slow decay, and both the natural and the processed sounds are presented through a multi-channel speaker system in the three chambers in which the audience can move about freely.
In collaboration with visual artist and choreographer Ea Verdoner, Rosenbaum stages the piano’s gradual transformation as an audiovisual performance, where music, videos and performers interact with the subterranean architecture. They explore the state of transformation that is already a part of Cisternerne: The slow degradation of the chambers over time, the stalactites that grow and fade, as well as the natural forces that subtly alter the architecture. They turn the climatic conditions of the space into central actors in a narrative about the interconnectedness of life and death - expressed through the sound and video installations.