ein tag und eine stunde in urbo kune

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Europe needs a capital. A unifying metropolis dedicated to science, education, the arts and celebration, a city that is open and accessible to everyone. Where this city will arise and who will live there, what it will look like and how it will smell and sound – these are questions that a day and an hour in urbo kune attempts to explore with the means of music theatre.

a day and an hour in urbo kune is a 25-hour-long project about European identity, urban planning, history, art, politics and architecture. Using music, film, photography, visual art, narrators and gastronomy, the production gives us a look at life in the fictional capital of the United States of Europe. There’s no getting around the fact that a United States of Europe is a must, declares the very first sentence of the manifesto drawn up by the makers of this project, and its realisation should start with the capital: Urbo Kune. In order for people to identify with the ‘spiritual and intellectual space’ that the United States of Europe represents, the European Community first of all needs to have a spiritual and intellectual centre. Urbo Kune means ‘common city’ in Esperanto, the language conceived for the purpose of uniting all peoples. This city is an ideal, of course – but as a teaser for the future, it will become a reality in the Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ in a 25-hour-long time travel journey to 4 July 2025.

Urban opera urbo kune is a joint project by the music theatre company netzzeit and experimental architecture forum (f.e.a.). The project was initiated by the Czech-Austrian architectural theorist Jan Tabor (b. 1944), greatly inspired by the work of the Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid (b. 1950). Within the framework of this opera, Zaha Hadid´s designs will provide the basis for improvisations developed by Swedish free-jazz saxophonist Mats Gustafsson (b.1964) in collaboration with musicians of the Klangforum Wien. Prior to this project, Zaha Hadid was a guest at the Holland Festival in 2010, when she designed a special ribbon-shaped pavilion for performances of Bach´s solo works. a day an an hour in urbo kune is an ongoing programme which the audience can walk in and out of, in order to get a bite to eat or catch some sleep.

The founding of the city Urbo Kune, which goes on from December 2013 to May 2015, is a musical process. As the spiritual and intellectual centre of a continent, Urbo Kune will be built from a single, unique material: music. Or, to be more precise, the music of our times. The urban design functions as a score; through the process of mixture, amalgamation and interpretation, sound will solidify to become a city.

How does this work in practice? An outstanding example is urbo kune: Konstellation no. 4, realized on 6 September 2014 at the Library & Learning Center of the Vienna University of Economics and Business. Zaha Hadid designed a library for this university, which has not yet been built. Part of that programme was a musical interpretation of her designs for the building by saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, together with members of Klangforum Wien; the musicians used the graphic work as a score and erected the library as a piece of music – certainly a very unusual premiere.

In the run-up to the completed 25-hour-long opera, the project is taking shape in a variety of such ‘constellations’, in which the mainstays of the plan are separately investigated. The Konstellations are symposium-like music theatre performances, but at the same time also research sessions that are open to the public – since the European capital belongs to all of us, we should design it collectively. Some of the themes keep coming back, others are one-off excursions into architecture and urban history, music theory, visual art and the performing arts, urban development, European research, performance art or literature. Together these different research productions comprise the large-scale, 25 hour-long music theatre piece. The complete work will have its world premiere in May 2015 in Cologne and be presented at the Holland Festival on 6 and 7 June 2015, as the event takes longer than one day. In addition to the programme developed in Austria and Germany, in Amsterdam there will be contributions by Arnon Grunberg and Francine Houben, among others.

BIOGRAPHIES

In 1985, the composer and conductor Beat Furrer formed the ensemble Société de l’Art Acoustique, later renamed as Klangforum Wien. Led by Sylvain Cambreling since 1997, this Austrian ensemble for contemporary music has a core group of 24 musicians from 10 different countries, all of whom have a say in important artistic decisions. Klangforum Wien has received various awards and performs on large stages in Europe, America and Japan as well as at festivals. Throughout the years, the group has formed close ties with various composers, conductors and soloists. Its repertoire varies from classic modern pieces to works by promising young composers, experimental jazz and free improvisation – the musicians have premiered some 500 new compositions. The ensemble offers a forum for the authentic performance of modern music and encourages intensive discussion on different aspects of contemporary composing. Since 2009, the company has been affiliated with the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz as a ‘teacher’. Klangforum Wien has collaborated on recordings for various labels and can boast a discography of some 70 CDs. The ensemble was in the Holland Festival in 2007 with Fama, a ‘listening theatre’ piece.

netzzeit is a workshop for developing contemporary music theatre in its broadest sense. Collaborating with both Austrian art initiatives and those outside of Austria, it sets up interdisciplinary projects intersecting the arts, science and politics. The name netzzeit (meaning net time) was chosen to express a fascination with people who use the internet to its fullest potential in order to realise their interdisciplinary projects. Headed up by artistic directors Nora and Michael Scheidl, netzzeit is a non-profit organisation. It has been sponsored by the city of Vienna's cultural department for the last 28 years to produce theatre which is either not possible within the conventional theatre set-up or is not being produced for other reasons. Since 2000 netzzeit has been increasingly successful in developing its projects in collaboration with Austrian as well as international partners. In 2004 and 2005 netzzeit bundled all their activities in Vienna into a festival for new music theatre entitled Out of Control, which has been held bi-annually since 2005.

The forum experimentelle architektur (f.e.a.) is an independent initiative for architectural trends in Austria and its neighboring countries. The range of activities covers publications, symposia and excursions to installations in public spaces and exhibitions in established institutions. Particularly important for f.e.a. is to look at the architecture and the visual arts in the context of other specialist areas.