At the end of last year, the musician and pianist Susanne Böhm >>> https://www.kirstensusanneboehm.de asked me if I could imagine working with her. She would like to try to set a picture of mine to music on her grand piano! Not a composition, but intuitively improvised! I agreed & was very excited about this endeavour. She chose this picture
Admittedly - I had great difficulty imagining that this would work! A music to moving pictures, a sequence of pictures or a video yes
but to a single image?
Technically very well set up, we met virtually at our computers ... After a short greeting & a few sentences about our baby, I set up the picture & Susanne started to play live on her grand piano!
FLASH!!
It had taken less than 10 seconds & I saw myself transported to a train compartment ... sitting diagonally opposite the young lady, the background rushing past us ... After a few more seconds, I saw the smoke from the cigarette rising, I could even smell it ... WOW! After about 2 minutes the journey was over ... We were both blown away by our mutual feedback, and the other listeners who were present were also very enthusiastic ... they roughly shared my imagination!
Encouraged by our ‘success’, we wanted to repeat this with another picture ... Another picture was chosen by her, but various external circumstances caused a meeting to fail! Then I came up with the idea of turning the whole thing round: she should send me some music, I go out & the music guides me to the picture! Susanne took this up with enthusiasm & I got 1:34 min. piano music ... !
When I first heard it, my first impulse, the first spontaneous idea, was to find a motif in Paris or Prague ... I imagined a morning atmosphere ... maybe it had been raining, some fog on the ground, a bridge, a person! Possibly even a bit ‘kitschy’! Definitely black and white!
I hadn't seen any colour while listening to the music ... that's very unusual for me, as I usually photograph & think in colour! An intensive exchange with my wife, the listner Gudrun Otten >>> www.go-impuls.com ended with me travelling to Paris or Prague to look for my photo. From Mallorca, in the low season & then still under the current Covid restrictions, this proved to be very difficult to do. However, I realised that I needed an energy other than the island for this picture! I booked a trip to Barcelona!
An experiment & completely new for me! The music was supposed to lead me to the motif on the street, so to speak ... At 6am on the first morning I was already travelling with Susanne's music on a continuous loop, expecting something to lead me to my picture! I had my Parisian ideas in my head ... In Barcelona, however, things look very different, I realised quite quickly.
It was to be the late afternoon of the third day when I suddenly saw a street scene & knew immediately:
THAT´S IT!
Having become a fisherman, I positioned myself and tried out all kinds of perspectives and settings ... I didn't really have much time, because it was clear that the light changes quite quickly at this time of day (5pm)! A repetition was not possible, because the next day was my return journey! With the music back in my ears (although I had already totally internalised it, my experience as a musician helped me) I waited!
I TOOK JUST ONE PICTURE!
After four weeks of collaboration with Susanne & Gudrun, a sound engineer & a video cutter, the word essence of a poem was added, which makes the overall concept a great whole ...
How does the new enter the world?
What makes ideas so irresistible that they change the world? What charges things with that unmistakable energy that turns ideas into world-changing events? What potential opens up when two completely different disciplines translate each other?
Connected in a common field of energetic vibration, the beat sets the steps of a street photographer who, following his instinct, hits the moment when music and space combine perfectly. There is no time for the dance. The music has already ended. The picture rests in the room. The appointment is a promise. An opening.
BREATHE. IN AND OUT.
We are carried beyond our usual way of thinking into a dimension between time and space. Between feelings and thoughts. Between life and death. Breathe in and breathe out.
The dance begins and with it we move through an image, the energy of which enters into a new vibration with the music. The image moves us in time with the music. We allow ourselves to be carried along for a while, then our inner images change direction.
We indulge in the fantasies and imaginings that we enjoy in our lives. A new reality emerges. Initially within us. All senses awakened, feelings are suddenly channelled in an unexpected direction. Memories are triggered, like silent witnesses patiently waiting to intervene. Into this dance with the new.
The grammar of an image anchored in space plays with the grammar of music anchored in time.
The result is a cross-border dialogue between space and time, sound and image, proximity and distance, colour and sound. Unexpected potentials and possibilities develop when they are opened up to each other. New meanings and effects emerge.
Long enough to become anchored in the body. Short enough to remain essential.
Gudrun Otten