“Distant Resonance” is an artistic research project scheduled to run for three years. “Sounding Situations” is teaming up with Kampnagel, Radialsystem Berlin, the Deutsche Oper Berlin and various other institutions to explore the ways in which its own sound and sensation and story are connected to and resonate with distant locations. The first part of the “Wagner Worldwide” trilogy is set to premiere in the Tischlerei of the Deutsche Oper Berlin.

“Wagner Worldwide” is a work of musical theatre for a female singer and scalable orchestra, presented from multiple perspectives. Interrelations at a global level coincide with individual ties to political events on a personal, emotional level. The setting: a prime-time newsroom.

“Wagner Worldwide” is an attempt to illustrate the area of overlap between the activities of the Wagner mercenary group made up of Russian paramilitaries and the mythological deeds depicted by Richard Wagner. Exploring how the feelings of the general public are informed by current global myths, the project aims to deconstruct these myths and set up opposing narratives. Music is provided by instrumentalists involved with, and influential within, Berlin’s alternative “Echtzeit” scene, a community whose work is known for generating compositions in the area of overlap between reduction, minimalism, new music and post-Cage soundscapes. The assumption is that Echtzeit pieces challenge the prevailing polarising interpretation of Wagner’s works. Over the course of five scenes, “Wagner Worldwide” overlays the political research of “Sounding Situations” onto the musical cosmos of “Echtzeit Wagner”.

“Sounding Situations” is a crucible for highly innovative works of musical theatre that bring together drama, music and audiences in a physical and yet imaginary space for the purpose of artistic expression. Its projects conjure up moments in which political art, topical issues, artistic magic and notions of reality and utopia meld into a multilayered opus. Since 2014, the collective consisting of Milena Kipfmüller, Klaus Janek and Jens Dietrich has been utilising language, instruments, samples, recordings and live music and edits to explore stage-based situations within the matrix of drama, composition and musical theatre. The company often pursues subversive experiments in cross-border, intercontinental and transcultural contexts, all as a way of facing down challenges and pointing up the beauty of our common human condition. One area of focus is its real-time adaptation of original works of music, on-location recordings and spoken-word audio, all of which alter their respective definitions and create a web of auditory meaning when blended together.