About the LABOR
How can a concert performance be made accessible to a deaf audience?
As part of the revival of the interdisciplinary project ‘Dreamteam’, the artists-in-residence from the uBu Collective are working with the deaf musician Matthias Ranner to trial various measures aimed at breaking down barriers.
The focus is on integrating perspectives from an artistic residency that explores music from the viewpoint of deaf people. A key question is how performative elements such as costume, movement and sound can become not merely aesthetic devices, but increasingly aesthetic-functional technologies designed to make music accessible to a deaf audience. An important part of the process is breaking down barriers through dialogue with people who bring under-represented perspectives to the table. New knowledge is not only developed by individual team members but shared with the entire ensemble. Only in this way can a shared awareness and sensitivity to the social and political dimensions of music be fostered. The focus is on dialogue with the deaf musician and performer Matthias Ranner, with a view to further developing the concert performance “Dreamteam”. The aim is to integrate Matthias Ranner’s working methods into the performance and to implement measures within the music that break down barriers from the perspective of deaf people.
Funded by the Diversity Fund of the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Sharing
On Thursday 13 August at 6 pm at the Un-Label Studio
About the Ensemble
uBu, an ensemble for new concert performances, explores music as a physical and social experience. Founded in Cologne in 2016, uBu comprises three musicians, three dancers and a costume designer. Their reinterpretation of B.A. Zimmermann’s ballet blanc *Présence* earned them the 2016 Pergamenschikow Prize and a performance at the Schwetzingen Festival. This was followed by works such as Vladimir Guicheff-Bogacz’s “La Palanca” (2018) and Huihui Cheng’s “Calling Sirens” (2019). In 2022, uBu launched the “Mutants in Music” series, which takes place roughly once a year at TanzFaktur in Cologne, Frankfurt LAB and resonanzraum in Hamburg. The first instalment, ‘Minimal Dominion’ (featuring composer Ui-Kyung Lee and choreographer Naïma Mazic), built on research that had previously resulted in a 360° music video series filmed within the Cologne Philharmonie in 2021. Following ‘Mutants in Music: II. Becoming uBu’ (2023) and ‘On Hearing and Fairies – pas de concert’ (2024), ‘Mutants in Music: III. Dreamteam’ will now follow in spring 2025.
Credits: Niclas Weber
