Silvan confronts with the ambivalence of archaic beginnings and modern culture.
Man created civilisations and built big cities in the nature that he found. But his longing for nature is permanent. So he created artificial oases within his artificial world. In an abstract form, „Silvan“ is a journey between these worlds, a trip to the loneliness and the interdependence of both worlds.
Jumping musically into the past and into the future, the work describes the tide of history.
Silvan is a stereo-acoustic production.
Christian Wolz only used sounds that he personally gathered and he also played all musical instruments by himself. But his main instrument remains his voice – in arranged and unarranged forms. He addresses sounds and their interweaving with great passion and develops his sequences, sounds and structures out of up to hundreds of sound tracks.
This winter the Berlin based vocal artist Christian Wolz will presentate his 10th album "Rátarr" - . Ever since he published his first album "El Castata" (1992) he consequently developed his own vocal techniques. Being a master of voice he feels comfortable within the world of sounds. While his early works almost reminded of exorcism, the tender sounds of his current work lead us to a way of catharsis.
All dimensions, even beyond time and space, are open. Sometimes a gentle call penetrates cold cloister-walls and it seems like it is echoing from a very far distance. Then again Wolz shows us how planet earth spent 90 % of its history by leading us into the desert. Flying like finest grains of sand his voice is travelling and feeding remote rainforests. Remaining on the ground we take part in strange but, deep inside, seemingly familiar rituals. At the end of the album the horizon clears, the traveller has arrived in the present - which means eternity. And the ancestors are still singing.
Sometimes his voice sounds Arabic, sometimes Asian. Sometimes we are feeling like we were one hundred thousand years old, sometimes we believe to be hearing medieval fanfares. Then again modern classic, electro-pop or techno-sound comes through.
The free form is ruling - an artist is in his element. The album keeps surprising the listener until we ask ourselves, where the distant galaxy might be, out of which Wolz is creating.
Antje Grabenhorst
StimmUngen is a work that deals with the musical expression of various emotional conditions.
It combines composition with improvisation.
The artist put together sound material from earlier works and combined them with new structures, that build the backing tape of this new work.
There is no predictable goal. Just the duration and the basic material are planned.
Anything that happens during the performances depends on the actual situation.
Several performances of about 20 minutes are planned - the basic material of each performance is identical. The varying element is the live vocal performance.
The premiere ("ST1") took place at the Kryptonale 2003 Festival at the Wasserspeicher Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin.
The album "StimmUngen ST1" is the first studio-version of this work-in-progress.
The soundtrack of the dance performance by Norbert Kliesch. The seemingly real life on the screen becomes the new form of communication and experience of the 21st century. Self-representation is constituted as fulfillment in life. Definition of life, of self-esteem, is obtained through displaying one's own body on the marketplace and, reversely, its consumption. It seems as if Mankind wishes to get rid of its previous life without electronic communication media and become a part of the immense flood of information itself, in order to avoid its own death. "todaycom", Norbert Kliesch's degree work of his studies in choreography at the "Hochschule für Schauspielkunst Ernst Busch" is a dance performance piece that deals with images and self perception of the body in the world of media. Four dancers, three video projections, one music composition. A space is created for vulnerable intimacy and radical public exposure, for longing, isolation and the search for a communal form of experience. Christian Wolz realizes the audio part for this project.
october 2000 - 12 titles - 50'
After a wonderful track on Belladonne, many people ask for more from Christian Wolz.Christian Wolz comes back with an album in the same spirit: 12 jewels carved by his magic voice. Hypnotic, shamanic,bewitching, this master piece blends voice and lovely orchestrations sometimes celtic sometimes medieval and esoteric. As if Dead Can Dance met Diamanda Galas or a breton bard.
form of presentation •
diary excerpts (read aloud by two speakers) and vocal pieces (christian wolz)
development of the theme •
a young man feels trapped in a seemingly hopeless situation. ("gefesselt"). he feels cut off and isolated from the world. despite desperate attempts, he has no more ties to his environment. the reasons for this depression are first revealed during the course of the dialogue the main character has with himself: in associative diary excerpts – often just pieces of a thought - and in physical expression which is conveyed here with the human voice. it ends with the unavoidable realization that the only possible solution is voluntary death.
CD production "no" (limited edition:12 copies) Confinement, oppression, closeness and intimacy are the themes of this project.
A one-man audience and a vocal performer, separated by glass.
A ten-minute encounter in close quarters.
Vocal artist Christian Wolz performs this piece in 5 sequences for one person sitting directly across from him. Each sequence lasts ca. 2 minutes. During this time, a special form of communication takes place.
The listener is mainly manipulated acoustically, but is also encouraged to interact.
The voice as man’s most direct instrument. Electro-acoustic means, such as 2 microphones and effect processors, serve as further instruments
24 short performances in 5 days.
Only 24 people had the opportunity to participate in this project.
The masses weren’t meant to be reached with this project, but rather individuals.
The concerts were recorded acoustically and visually. The resulting material will be used in further artistic projects – a sort of work-in-progress.
"AzA-DOMANA/H/ERTUM - wir leben und sterben" ("We live and die”) is the 2nd part of the CD trilogy "helexium i-an dIVoNDo mestrum - der mensch ist licht und finsternis"
The subject of this piece of work is dealing with pain.
In this piece, the causes of pain, the pain itself, screams of pain, and finally its release are portrayed in 5 sequences.
We can’t explain pain, we can only describe its individual symptoms. What is pain? Everyone knows it, has experienced it, can understand what it’s like to be in pain. But a clear definition, a description in words, is next to impossible.
Headache, heartache, pain of separation – pain has many names and many facets, psychological as well as physical. But the pain described in this piece of work is the original pain – an archaic, archetypical feeling. Its core can only be grasped emotionally, or by means of emotional artistic forms of portrayal.
Avant-garde opera "COR - Das Herz" ("The Heart") • live-cd
COR – the Latin word for "heart" – does not just represent the symbolic center of human feeling, but also the actual life pump which drives the circulation of energy, hereby starting the life cycle, maintaining it, and eventually cutting it off.
COR tells the story of a young man ill with AIDS who creates an artificial method of communicating with the audience. In an associative form, he assesses his own existence and imagines his life with the illness and his death. It focuses on his fight for life, the illness itself, coping and self-destruction along with all the related feelings, such as yearning, fear, joy, love, sadness and pain.
"devil intus mestra de la fore - song of a maniac" is the musical embodiment of an insane mind, a portrait drawn by the human voice with electroacoustic backing. Christian Wolz contructs the communicative means of those who create their own rality with powerfully expressed emotions, a reality society can answer only with mental isolation and manipulation. In his work, Christian Wolz attempts to mediate between the insane world and the allegedly real world into which people take refuge, to which they submit in order to lead a "normal" life instead of comprehending their own madness. An unique, artificial language articulates these stories from alien worlds, these desperate cries for help, melancholy laments and screams for life.
Christian Wolz works almost exclusively with the voice, that most direct of acoustic intruments which is simulaneously the sensitive membrane of the body, giving immediate, direct expression to the different emotional levels.
"devil intus mestra de la fore" links up with Christian Wolz's previous work "CO DORA - ICH LEBE", and is thus part of his work in progress. The piece is dedicated to all those who refuse to subordinate themselves and are ostracized by society in punishment.
"EL CASTATA" (birth) is the first part of a trilogy - concept. It deals very concretely with the becoming of human life, with new beginnings, with the transformation into a new form of existence and with the feelings connected to this: love, fears, mourning, hate, anger, joy and pain.