Live-recording of the premiere performance by ASKO|Schönberg, with soloists of Ensemblekollektiv Berlin, conducted by Baldur Brönnimann, sound by Florian Bogner, 24th of February 2022, Muziekgebouw aan 't Ij, Amsterdam.
inhabit_inhibit is a large-scale, immersive, spatialized composition for 4 mixed quartets, feedback-enhanced soloists and live-electronics.
Philosopher Timothy Morton refuses to talk about climate change, but insists on calling the times we are living in the period of the sixth mass extinction. Cause for this new mass extinction is the “run-away effect” in which several human-caused ecological changes feed back into eachother until they spin out of control. In inhabit_inhibit this feedback effect and the related loss-of-control is being transposed into the sonic realm, and informs the conceptual, sonic, spatial and dramaturgical dimensions of the composition.
inhabit_inhibit makes use of 6 instruments (bass flute, bass oboe, bass clarinet & baritone saxophone + the piano and harp), which are able to create feedback through the interaction between a speaker standing next to them and a microphone connected to them/inserted into them. These soloists thus are expanded sonically and the function of the performer is changed drastically. Through the feedback - which is never entirely under the performer's control - the wind players can now also produce sound without using their breath, the piano and harp can create sound without effectively activating the strings. They have become hybrid, augmented instruments, in similar ways that today’s reality has become a hybrid and augmented one, and that our bodies are more and more becoming hybrid. Furthermore, since the distance between microphone and speaker defines the feedback, their position in the performative space will influence their sound production, as well as how the sound of one instrument leaks into the microphone of the other. This creates an only partially controllable network of connections, a true mesh, to use the words of Morton, between technology, the performers, their live-instruments and the space they inhabit together with the four acoustic quartets and the audience. The result is an immersive sonic environment from which it is impossible to escape. "There is no outside", as Morton writes.
Interview (NL) about inhabit_inhibit with Joep Christenhusz for NRC Handelsblad (24/2/2022)
Interview (NL) about inhabit_inhibit with Frank Mulder for De Groene Amsterdammer (6/1/2022)
Interview in podcast in Soundmaking series by Matthew Shlomowitz & Hakon Stene:
Review (NL) of premiere of inhabit_inhibit in NRC Handelsblad (25/2/2022)
Review (NL) by Ben Taffijn of premiere of inhabit_inhibit on Blog Nieuwe Noten (25/2/2022)
Review (DE) by Michael Klier of premiere of inhabit_inhibit on Blog Bachtrack (25/2/2022)