The voices of Ensemble Medulla open up new artistic grounds in the context of contemporary experimental music. Based on a somatic understanding of the group sound, the five singers develop an intriguingly continuous sound spectrum, which allows them to shift between various vocal qualities with great ease. They design the material for the following phrases fluently according to the principle of anticipation. This leads to a shift, fusion and reinterpretation of genre-specific qualities. The reintroduction of the singing voice into the spectrum of the experimental voice, as well as the transition between everyday voice and artistic expression, are important to them.
Through the overlapping of voices far more than five solo voices emerge. This multiplication of voices in the group sound is what they call “a collective analogue storage”. The narrative unfolds in the tension and interspaces of a sound journey through various layers of time and cultural contexts.
In this way the constellation of “five women singing” – while they pursue everyday activities such as spinning, nursing, eating, washing etc. – is endlessly varied. These activities are usually not carried out, but they are audible and noticeable in the associative space of the performance and undergo a process of continuous transformation. The creative resource of the ensemble consists of the professional artistic expertise of each individual within different fields (music, dance, performance, fine art, poetry and costume) and gives it a distinctive quality.
Ensemble Medulla pursues a feministic approach to performance art. In the concert-performance “Waiting Room: Körper // Grenze” it questions the performativity of the female body in dance and singing, and beyond the borders of the body in the realm of existenzial borderline experiences between death and life. In this field of tension the voice is revealing itself with great clarity as an instrument of transgression and subversion.
As part of „Field Notes“ – Monat der zeitgenössischen Musik.
