星期天, 15. September 2019
Teatro Cervantes, Buenos Aires
www.teatrocervantes.gob.ar
Barbara Togander (声音, 电子, 唱盘), Fernando Perales (电子), Jorge Chikiar (合成器), Luis Conde (中音萨克斯风, 薩克斯風), Hans Koch (低音单簧管, 萨克斯风), Flo Stoffner (吉他), Luis Ianes (吉他, 电子), Cecilia Quinteros (大提琴), Carlos Vega (低音大提琴), Lionel Friedli (鼓)
A year before the Exposition internationale des Arts Décoratifs et industriels modernes of 1925, where the word Art déco would come into being, Marcel L’Herbier reached for a big feat. With “L’Inhumaine“ he created a synthesis of all the arts together with his generation’s most exceptional artists, just as the theoretician Ricciotto Canudo had demanded it for the cinema. His manifest for modern French art and technology unites design by Alberto Cavalcanti, Claude Autant-Lara and Fernand Leger, architecture by Robert Mallet-Stevens, costumes by Paul Poiret, furniture by Pierre Chareau and Michel Dufet, ballet by Jean Börlin and music by Georges Antheil und Darius Milhaud – which has since been lost – to create one large ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’.
The film is defined by an aesthetic of the mechanic, with its abstracting montage, fragmentation of objects and dream of a panoptic vision. It not only testifies to how an eclectic group of artists from all disciplines imagined the union of modernity and technology but also how French universalism of the 1920s staged the categories of humanity and inhumanity. Thus, personified inhumanity in the form of prima donna Claire Lescot only finds back to humanity when she is introduced to the fantastic world of newest technology by scientist Einar Norsen that restores her to new life.
The IOIC – Institute of Incoherent Cinematography will be showing the film with a new musical performance under the collaborative direction of Luis Conde (ARG) and Flo Stoffner (CH). An orchestra of ten international improvising musicians from different genres – from classical, to jazz, rock and contemporary experimental music – will be representing the film’s two central themes: technology vs. modernity, humanity vs. inhumanity. Alongside traditional and modern instruments, a number of self-conceived electronic instruments built especially for this film performance act as extensions to the human body.