Somewhere, where future and past collide, there must be a space in between — a gap. Or perhaps secret portals to other worlds. Maybe just a speck of dust carrying the idea of a new beginning? Step with us into the gap and search for the loophole in time.
The starting point for THE GAP is a short parable by Franz Kafka from 1920. In it, he describes the human condition as caught between past and future, forced to struggle against both. Hannah Arendt places this story at the beginning of her book Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought and counters Kafka’s image of despair with a belief of her own: “Every human being is a beginning and a beginner.” For Arendt, a new beginning is — despite everything — always possible, because the human being is free. But how can one live up to the demands of that freedom? Which stories should be retold and carried into the future — and which should not? Is history a prerequisite for freedom, or does it stand in its way?
In the performance-installation, different temporal experiences in music become tangible: the pushing forward and being pulled back, moments of stillness, resistance, and repetition. THE GAP creates a sensuous space between past and future, between decay and renewal, and asks how histories are collected, shared, or reimagined — and whether other realities are possible.
The audience moves through a spatial parcours on different paths. They encounter installations activated by small musical-performative ensembles. They may play sound topographies of memory, rummage through visual and sonic archives, or enter the writing room where the murmur of books can be heard and new texts can be woven into an endless fabric of words. Along the way, they meet strange time travelers who have become stranded in the present with their time machines — all of them searching, like us, for the energy of a new beginning, which is ultimately summoned in a grand tutti ensemble piece.
ZONE – THE ARCHIVE
A string trio engages directly with a set of turntables, creating a dialogue between analog memory and live sound. Fragments of recorded material—voices narrating Hannah Arendt and string excerpts from the composition “Final Act,” which the audience will hear at the end of THE GAP—are mixed, scratched, and thus reinterpreted in real time. The musicians respond to these sonic remnants while being connected by elastic bands to the spinning platters, weaving their playing and the sound of the vinyl into a single, evolving musical fabric.
Also in THE ARCHIVE, the audience encounters the installation TOPOGRAPHIES—a turntable-based installation in which, instead of vinyl, objects are placed on the platter, and instead of a needle, a contact microphone picks up the surface qualities of diverse materials and object textures (see image below). Here, visitors can manipulate the turntables themselves, triggering and reshaping “sounding topographies” by, for example, changing playback speed, rearranging materials, adding objects, or switching engraved clay records, among other actions.
ZONE – TRANSCIENCE
In this environment, a percussionist performs within a 9-meter-long wooden construction reminiscent of a skeletal whale, overgrown with dark, moss-like vegetation. The performing body in movement, carefully selected instruments, and the arching architecture merge into a single resonant body: struck, brushed, or disturbed by the rustling of the performing body passing by—when activated, the structure itself becomes a strangely sonorous organism. Sounds emerge as if from a fossil in slow, evolving transformation—oscillating between organic decay and latent vitality, embodying time as both fleeting and persistent.
ZONE – SALON ÉCRITURE
This writing room offers a quieter, introspective encounter. Books murmur softly, whispered texts excerpts of Kafka's and Arendt's writings unfold within softly trempling paper sculptures creating a sensory acoustic tapestry. The audience is invited not only to listen but to participate: writing responses on small cards to questions that probe and provoke wishes and hopes for the future, while prompting unexpected journeys down memory lane.
All responses are then hung in a paper forest, readable for present and future audiences.
ZONE – TIME MACHINE
Along the way, visitors encounter two eccentric time travelers stranded somewhere in the future with their malfunctioning time machine. Searching for a secret and magical instrument with unique sonic powers to overcome temporal dislocations—the duo wants to return to Earth. At times successful, a wondrous portal opens to a video-animated, electrified cosmic stream. However, the retrofitted control room has its quirks: only if all participants truly seek the energy for a collective restart by rubbing magic stones can their fragmented stories and actions gradually converge toward a blissful final return.
So far, the galactic counter-forces have never been overcome, so strong that they break the collective endeavors and completely dismantle the oscillating machines into whimsical groans and creaks.
And the two unusual time travelers are still stranded somewhere in the future…
After ca. 50 minutes, the meandering installation phase of THE GAP culminates in a large, spatialized tutti ensemble composition—FINAL ACT—in which the audience gathers at the center of the unfolding action, surrounded by four instrumental groups. A final, powerful push and pull unfolds across the ensembles, guiding the listeners toward a possible, sonically evaporating loophole, and into a vast, open stillness where the inherent silence of the performance space resides.
For more information: https://the-gap.space/