RASCHx: Schumann’s somathemes
2018-2020
Rasch X is a series of mutational modes of appearances (performances, lectures, installations) based upon two starting materials: Robert Schumann’s Kreisleriana op. 16 (1838), and Roland Barthes's essays on the music of Schumann, particularly focusing on ‘Rasch’ (1979), a text exclusively dedicated to Schumann’s Kreisleriana. To these materials other components may be added for every single particular version: visual elements (pictures, videos), other texts, or further aural elements (recordings or live-electronics).
Rasch X generates an intricate network of aesthetic-epistemic cross-references, through which the listener has the freedom to focus on different layers of perception: be it on the music, on the texts being projected or read, on the images, or on the voices. Situated beyond ‘interpretation’, ‘hermeneutics’, and ‘aesthetics’ the series Raschx is part of a wider research on what might be labelled as “experimental performance practices”, which productively deviate from conventional (repetitive and reproductive) performative strategies and that invite the audience to actively engage with the performative moment, transforming familiar artistic objects into objects for thought.
Paulo de Assis | concept and piano
Lucia D'Errico | audio and video projection, live-electronics, graphics
Further collaborators:
Heloisa Amaral | turntable (Rasch 23)
Bill Brooks | voice (Rasch 1-11)
Darla Crispin | voice (Rasch 1-27)
Einar Torfi Einarsson | composition, graphics and installation (Rasch 11+1)
Bob Gilmore | voice (Rasch 15)
Catherine Laws | voice (Rasch 1-27)
Bobby Mitchell | piano (Rasch 11)
Marlene Monteiro Freitas | turntable (Rasch 25)
Gerhard Nierhaus | composition and video (Rasch 1-3)
Juan Parra C. | audio and video projection, live electronics (Rasch 1-27)
Jan Schacher | audio and video projection, live electronics and vocal performance (Rasch 11)
