This July sees the launch of Paul Brody’s LOVE&DEMOCRACY, a sound installation in four parts that will accompany Lettrétage until the end of the year.
Paul Brody has lived in Seattle, Boston, California and Berlin, to name just a few. As a sound artist, composer and trumpeter, he works regularly on projects at the Théâtre de Vidy in Lausanne, the Münchner Kammerspiele, the Berliner Schaubühne, the MC93 Paris, the New York Harlem Opera and the Wiener Burgtheater, among others – and now also at Lettrétage.
“The theme of Love&Democracy stems from the necessity of our times. They are a silent duo. Without a love of place and our neighbors, we cannot truly have a democracy, and without treating each other fairly – democratically – there can be no real love”, Paul Brody explains about his project.
For years, he has been fascinated by how reading a poem aloud can change a person’s voice as the language of poetry takes hold and has an effect on the spoken word. In the process of translating a poem, Brody sees a dilemma: when a poem is translated into another spoken or written language, the translator must decide which aspect of the poem to focus on – the literal or symbolic meaning of the words, or their cadence. With his idea of musical translation, his work attempts to search for a melody in the spoken word based on the voices of the poets themselves: “The written words then, are no longer the goal, but rather something akin to a musical score that’s brought to life acoustically.”
The series kicks off July 7 with the first installment, titled THE NEIGHBORHOOD – featuring texts by Tom Bresemann, Gregor Dotzauer, Tom Drury, Angélica Freitas, Gregor Hens, Christian Hawkey, Marina Frenk, Wolfgang Müller, Ivana Sajko, Kiki Sauer, Schivelbusch, Donna Stonecipher and Uljana Wolf.
In the trailer, Paul Brody shares thoughts on his project and gives us a sneak peek of his musical translation of the poems collected.