Die Hörposaune – Film
a film/installation by Isabell Spengler, Antonia Baehr and Jule Flierl, set in a visual installation by Nadia Lauro
„DIE HÖRPOSAUNE is a metabolizing landscape. It is impossible to say where it begins or ends. It is a sequence of openings that can absorb and expel. The eye, the ear, the body, the watching and the listening—they all are breathed in with that first inhalation, despite the distance from and mediation through the camera.” – Luise Meier
DIE HÖRPOSAUNE (The Hearing Trombone) is a film installation that stages a concert in an intimate immersive space. Hearing and breathing don’t happen naturally here, but are instead organized through spherical head-shields and earphone connections. Two performers vocally interpret the three-dimensional content of pop-up books that show the insides of a humans’ body and opulent flower bouquets, by emitting subtle, insalivated and pre-verbal sound. They play to a small audience seated around them in unusual postures of attentive listening. At the end the two performers move in a spaceless room and sing a baroque song in an invented language.
A reappearing musical motif of DIE HÖRPOSAUNE is the baroque “Song of the Cold Genius” by Henry Purcell. This song has been famously performed by the counter tenor and queer icon Klaus Nomi in New York of the 1980’s, while he was already suffering from the effects of HIV. He was one of the first public figures to die within the AIDS pandemic and his interpretation of the song directly anticipated his untimely death.
The rehearsals to DIE HÖRPOSAUNE by Antonia Baehr and Jule Flierl, accompanied by scenographer Nadia Lauro, started at the beginning of the COVID-pandemic. New questions around the intimacy of being together in shared spaces and of the intrusiveness of sharing breath emerged and fed the imaginary world of the dream-like film installation, realized in collaboration with filmmaker Isabell Spengler. In a surround-sound environment, the film installation offers an experience of remote closeness mediated through exuberant images and tactile vocal sounds.
Die Hörposaune (The hearing trombone)
Directed by Isabell Spengler, Antonia Baehr, Jule Flierl
Concept: Antonia Baehr, Jule Flierl
Co-concept: Isabell Spengler
Set in a visual installation by Nadia Lauro
With: Jule Flierl, Werner Hirsch
and: Gretchen Blegen, Carola Caggiano, Am Ertl, Nadia Lauro, Sharon Mercado Nogales, Nara Virgens
Costumes: Antonia Baehr, Jule Flierl, Nadia Lauro
iSperes : Plastique Fantastique – Yena Young & Marco Canevacci
Light design: Gretchen Blegen
Cinematographer: Bernadette Paassen
Sound recordists: Claudia Mattai del Moro, S. McKenna
Sound and technical manager: Carola Caggiano
Production manager: Nara Virgens
Stage technicians HAU: Tobias Castorph, Marcus Winterbauer
Catering: Matthias Halke
Still photographer: Anja Weber
Editor: Isabell Spengler
Color grading: Till Beckmann
Sound design and mix: Jochen Jezussek
Additional sound design: Juliana Saragosa
Title design: Franziska Morlok
Music with original compositions by: Antonia Baehr, Jule Flierl, S. McKenna
„Song of the Cold Genius“ by Henry Purcell, ( from King Arthur, 1684)
In an arrangement by Christina Anger
Text: „Die Luft- L’air, nécessaire à la vie“, Jean-Henri Fabre, 1857
Producers: Antonia Baehr, Jule Flierl, Alexandra Wellensiek
Administration: Alexandra Wellensiek / make up productions
Internship: Am Ertl, Sharon Mercado Nogales
Thank you: Daniel Adams, Silke Bake, Caroline Böttcher, Pauline Boudry, Guillaume Cailleau, die Galerie ChertLüdde, Lucile Desamory, Mars Dietz, Jade Dreyfuss, Stefanie Gaus, Jakob Hauptmann, Nanna Heidenreich, Neo Hülcker, Bettina Knaup, Luise Meier, Ernestine Müller-Loeffelholz, Sophie Watzlawick
A production by make up productions in co-production with HAU Hebbel am Ufer Berlin with the support of Theaterhaus Berlin Mitte.
The postproduction was supported by DIEHL+RITTER/ TANZPAKT RECONNECT, which is funded by the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media as part of the NEUSTART KULTUR initiative.
Premiere: 4 November 2022, Kino Arsenal, Berlin, Germany
Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft 1/2023 (Die Hörposaune) – Philipp Hohmann and Martin Adler
Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft 1/2023 (Die Hörposaune) here.
Die Hörposaune (The hearing trombone) – Luise Meier
Die Hörposaune (The hearing trombone) – English here.
Die Hörposaune (The hearing trombone) – Deutsch here.
Die Hörposaune, a filminstallation by Antonia Baehr & Jule Flierl & Isabell Spengler
with Werner Hirsch and Jule Flierl, set in a visual installation by Nadia Lauro at VIDEONALE.19 & VideonaleX