“The instrument as body” by Jonas Sollberger, project Two Humans & a Harp, Biel, Switzerland, August, 2023
Here is a harp. Here are two humans. Two chairs are still available to the two humans and that's it for the scenery. That's all there will be during the performance until the end.
First there is the encounter, the observation, the touch. Curves, lines, tension. The body of the harp, the body of the human, where are the similarities, where are the differences? The body as an instrument, the instrument as body. Then comes exploration. The exploration of noises, silences, two humans communicate with each other through a harp, in a new language, a language that is invented at the time, a language that is perpetually redefining itself, a language that seeks itself, finds a instant perhaps and, immediately, searches for itself again.
We will have understood very quickly, we are far from listening here to a piece of music on the harp in the manner of a classical music concert. But it must be said that we are not far from a concert either. The music runs through the whole performance.
Composed by performers Mathilde Bernard and Ilmārs Šterns, the public explores experimental music produced by human noises and harp noises, it must be seen as a whole, an entity. From start to finish, the harp is never used in the traditional way. The hands of the humans are relentless on the ankles, tap against the wood, slide along the column and the human hastens to imitate these sounds, to translate the sounds into gestures. Music becomes visual, sound and movement, silence and paralysis. The variety of sounds is very rich and their staging puts the music in the foreground. Very accomplished, the music knows how to surprise the public at every moment. The latter also has difficulty in differentiating whether the sound is produced by the harp or the human.
Who speaks, who sings? Where is the difference and how to tell the difference?
With their almost identical costumes, the humans are not personalized. That's not the point, we quickly understand that the two humans simply represent the human race. It doesn't matter if it's this or that person.
The public is invited to take a different and surprising look at this interpretation of the human. As if we could both recognize and discover ourselves in this staging. Mathilde Bernard and Ilmārs Šterns make us see the human as we have never seen it before, at times almost bestial like rodents busy dissecting tiny pieces, while suddenly we think we recognize an ingenious technician fiddling in a very complex machine . Finally, we see the urgent human need to possess, to appropriate the thing, it is mine! No it's mine, mine, mine, I got it first! a gesture that resonates here with destruction, with death, the instrument is reduced to the state of an object, an object at the center of a conflict. The harp is no longer seen as an instrument with the ability to allow humans to communicate and discover each other. The gaze that is placed here on man is very fair, because it is posed without judgement.
If the game of gestures is worked down to the millimeter, facial expressions could be more convincing and insistent. But luckily it doesn't impact the performance so much because the audience's gaze is directed to the hands and body. It's all there, in the hands, the hands on the surface of the harp, and the hands moving through the air and the air defined by the sound, and the sound punctuated by the shapes of the harp. This performance is for everyone and will especially seduce an audience that appreciates the search for a unique means of expression, in other words, the experimental.
/ You can find the full article in the home page of Quatrième Mur - text in french / quatriememur.ch
Excerpt from the new book by author and writer Annalisa Hartmann (Bern, CH), with a scene from the performance Two Humans & a Harp, Bern, Switzerland, August, 2023
“Two Humans and a harp is the name of the concert. The title immediately appeals to me and I decide to go, even though it is a crying day on the day of the concert.
Even before the two performers enter the room, the audience becomes very quiet. I listen to the barking of dogs and voices I hear from the street. Engine noises, laughter, shouting, everything is so loud.
Then the beginning of the performance. Knocking on wood. Tapping and stroking from four hands. This is beautiful, these hands, what they can do. I am amazed at this art, which does without words, I am spellbound.
They make noises that sound like animals. I sit in the back row and can't really make out their mouths. Are these sounds coming from their mouths or from their hands on steel and wood? I can no longer distinguish what is voice and what is harp. Can no longer tell where the human begins and where it ends. It's not just animal sounds. It is also breathing. That almost becomes a moan. Mouths moving towards the instrument, movements that are sensual. I can't help but see erotic images in it and wonder if that is intentional. Whether that is the message of the performance. Two humans and a harp. Or whether it's just me. My human being.
Other people are sitting around me. I wonder what is going on in their heads. And if they are wondering the same thing. Whether there are connections between our heads while we hear these animal breathing and moaning sounds that we don't know whether they are produced by the vocal cords or by the strings of the harp.
/ You can find the full text in her new book in German language / annalisa-hartmann.ch
Interview by Virginie Halter, Absolvent im Fokus - Ilmārs Šterns, HKB-Zeitung 2/2021: Kultur - und Kreativwirtschaft, P. 24, Bern, Switzerland, 30th of June, 2021
What excites you about artistic work in public space?
Public spaces do not necessarily mean outdoor space, they can also be indoors or in between. Each space exists with its own scenography, like this beautiful park where we are. In it, we act through conversations, gestures, or just by drinking that lemonade. What interests me is a different perspective on experiencing reality in the physical moment in time and space.
What fascinates you most about clothing?
I am inspired by avant-garde and Fluxus performances, where artists question everything; the cultural code and notion of what is aesthetically pleasing. I found it difficult to use my singing voice, trained in classical and jazz music, in this context and I stopped singing. I started working with my own skin and realized a nude performance with the Italian artist Elisabetta Cuccaro. We slid, slapped and scratched our skin with horse tail hair in double bass bow with a contact microphone attached. But I wasn't satisfied with the electronic sound. It neither achieved the same intimacy as the chant, nor exactly matched the acoustic sound of the skin. I asked myself: what do people interact with in their daily lives? With clothes! From this came the decision not only to work with the clothes themselves, but also with the relationship and interaction of the human body with them.
So did the proximity to everyday life and the behaviour of people come back as a topic?
Yes, when I was a singing teacher at the University of Music Pedagogy in Riga, my students' technique and interpretation skills were very advanced, probably due to the accessibility of teaching materials on the Internet, which was not available in my youth. But they couldn't connect
to themselves. Singers must learn the specific musical forms and techniques and interpret the composition as the author intended. But the performers in this process do not pay enough attention to how this interaction affects the mind and body of the performers. For me, clothes are performative sound instruments and I explore their possible instrumentality. I observe the behaviour of clothing and the behaviour of the human body.
Is there a reaction to one of your performances that you particularly remember?
After the clothes performance, a person from the audience came up to me and said: «Ilmār, I really didn't know how to react. I wanted to laugh but it was so serious." I find it exciting when people feel like they're in a strange place, have these conflicting feelings and reactions to something, and don't know how to act. The example given above is the closest you can get to the audience.
How can an outsider imagine the process before a performance?
You research, take notes, and find other things you need. One tries to experiment with materials in order to create a kind of encyclopaedia, as Umberto Eco put it. As the composer and author of the concept, I'm taking out codes and elements that I'm going to play with. It's not about rehearsing things, it's about thinking critically about what they mean. How can I get to the point where I'm aware of that – at least in the vocabulary of things? Only then can it become comprehensible for the public. The performance art itself involves the body. I use many elements of imitation or mirroring, but use them as a means of “doing things,” as Karen Barad put it. This gives me more freedom and opens up a new world.
/ You can find the full interview in the article /
Commented by Swiss composer Noel Schmidlin, Bern, Switzerland, February, 2020
“Through the simultaneity of the sound created by the movement of textiles and the voice, which not only imitates it but also comments on it, underscores or covers it up, we perceive a fusion as well as a contradiction. This changing perception reflects in a beautiful artistic way our complex and controversial relationship to materials that accompanies us through our lives”.
Written by Swiss painter Mirko Kircher, Museum Nacht, St. Gallen, Switzerland, 7th of September, 2019
“With almost no equipment he works with his voice, his body and his presence in the room. No electronics are needed for his wondrous "Wolf Piece". Šterns - A WOLF IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING”
Article by Lena Tichy, Menschliche Wölfe und ein wummerndes Klavier, BKA Berner Kulturagenda N°41, P. 12, Bern, Switzerland, 17th of October, 2019
The performance art of the exceptional young Latvian vocalist Ilmārs Šterns moves in the fascinating field of tension between strict conception and expressive execution, control and loss of control. Often it is concrete motifs from the everyday world or nature that he dissects or denaturalizes in his performances. Sometimes it is the undressing or the gestural repertoire of bowing on a string instrument, sometimes it is the soundscape of a wolf, Šterns always plays virtuously with the performative alienation effects - the artificial is unleashed and the animalistic is tamed. In the process, voice, body and objects become a moving and agitated super-instrument, gestures become sound and sounds become patterns of movement.
Article by Pro Helvetia Johannesburg, I. Šterns tunes audiences into the sensory language of clothes, Johannesburg, South Africa, 30th of November, 2019
His performance will explore the relationship between the body and clothes as a second skin. Ilmārs explains that “clothes are the first thing that we touch when we move, stand still or hug each other”. The performance will focus on the character that fabrics give to the human body and the colourful sounds that textile makes around the body. Ilmārs uses this as a springboard to interrogate pressing socio-economic and environmental questions currently running through the textile and fashion industries. The performance will take place in public spaces in the city of Yaoundé and Soa.
The workshop will introduce young musicians to the language of clothes and textiles as sensory language. Ilmārs explains that for musicians, “it is important to develop a sensitivity to the world that surrounds us. As clothes are an important part of our daily life it is interesting to develop our perception of different textiles/clothes and find their specific sounds in order to reach a deeper understanding of the musical background that surrounds us.” Ilmārs will encourage participants to consider their own clothes and observe other peoples’ in public spaces to develop a sense of how and what clothes are able to communicate. The workshop will culminate in sound performances in public spaces.
Written by Austrian critic Hans Höbenreich, Murtaler Zeitung , Stadt, Austria, 29th of July, 2019
“...It was followed by a great dance performance by Ilmārs Šterns, from the open barn door - an effective visual...”