Like a travelling circus or a fairground attraction, Welcome to Caveland! treks from town to town seeking refuge in theatres and at festivals, finding room there for performances, workshops, and other activities. In Brussels, Caveland makes its first stop, taking up residence at Les Brigittines, this year’s festival centre, where an extensive programme of activities is proposed. The cave is an ideas laboratory, a safe and private microcosm, an open space for furrowing, excavating, and digging; a utopian place where dreams can come to life and the world can be viewed with fresh eyes. Come and have a look!
(from the Kunstenfestivaldesarts programme)
   

   

1. UNDERWORLD

Welcome to Caveland ! First part : the animal and physiological side of music : muscles, nerves, breathings.
   

BREATHCORE

is a choir exploring modes of collectivity through the practice of breathing.
Breath is generic and contains a wide spectrum of characteristics - sonic, vibrational, tactile. Performers let their breath resonate and create a field of blurred respiratory noisescapes. Their individual breath signatures interact, barely detectable, creating an atmosphere of diluted presences.

BREATHCORES are without conductor or score and vary in format and form. Rehearsals and public moments are researching synchronization-processes, skill-sharing and non-verbal communication. Each BREATHCORE becomes a unique momentary snapshot of the group’s collective qualities.
Michael Schmid | Christiane Huber
   

MICHAEL SCHMID :

BEAT FUCKED ELF / FEEDBACK FLUTE

Michael Schmid : flute, mics & amps (with possible excerpts of flute history)
Microphones are the extended ears of the audience. Today’s technology allows us to creep into the most inaccessible resonating nooks to hear the unheard. Beat Fucked Elf reveals the skeletal resonances of a flute by stuffing its tube with tiny microphones. These ears are activated and deactivated in a choreography of changing listening angles. They excavate the flute’s Unidentified Audio-Objects, scout the archeology of its tube and unleash the hidden beast into the audience. Welcome to Caveland.
   (NB : the project’s title is a computer generated anagram, echoing the above described mutation of the flute’s sonic DNA)
Michael Schmid
    

   

2. AFTERWORLD

Welcome to Caveland ! Second part : Plato's cave, and music as reminiscence.
   

FREY : QUARTET#2

"Here Frey uses extended techniques to create a very quiet, soft, almost noteless grey soundworld within which brief passages of bowed sound exist for two or three seconds, each interspersed with a second or two of silence, but again with the sounds used gradually shifting across time. This is hauntingly beautiful music. The playing resembles an ethereal vocal ensemble more than it does a string quartet."
Richard Pinnell