PRESS KIT

• Press release • The music theater• Multimedia negotiations on the future of the Amazon: on Part III of “Amazonas” • The “Amazonas” educational program for children and teens• Participants• Cooperation partners• Performance dates and participants

Additional information:• The composers on their works• “Making art with the era’s means”—a talk with Peter Weibel• “The Amazonas enterprise” by Joachim Bernauer• “Amazonas and the view of the other” by Peter Ruzicka• “Amoahiki – the song of the rainforest” by Laymert Garcia dos Santos• “The Yanomami and the forest” by Bruce Albert• Words from Davi Kopenawa, shaman and Yanomami spokesperson

Contact:

Goethe-Institut:

Dr. Christine Regus, Pressesprecherin, Tel.: +49 30 25906-471, regus@goethe.de

Christiane Jekeli, Pressearbeit „Amazonas“, Tel.: +49 30 25906-546, presse.amazonas-musiktheater@goethe.de

Münchener Biennale:

Adelheid Maruhn, Leiterin Pressebüro, Tel.: +49 89 2805607, adelheid.maruhn@spielmotor.de

ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie:

Friederike Walter, Leitung Presse- und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit, +49 721 8100 1220, f.walter@zkm.de

“Amazonas – Music Theatre in Three Parts”: A new perspective on the Amazon The Amazon is a crucial factor in deciding global future. Huge areas of the world’s largest rain forest are being destroyed every day by slash-and-burn clearing for cattle breeding, and energy and natural resource production—with dramatic effects on climates throughout the world. An international art project takes this devastating development as its starting point: “Amazonas – Music Theatre in Three Parts.” The project links media art, music theatre, technology, and science to an artistic whole and casts a hitherto non-existent gaze at the Amazonian world. Amazonas music theatre has its world premiere on 8 May 2010 at the Munich Biennale – International Festival of New Music Theatre. The loss of the Amazonian rain forest likewise implies for numerous animal and plant species, the loss of their habitat and for Brazil’s indigenous people, the loss of their home. The Yanomami, one of the largest indigenous groups in South America, with a population of 33,000, live in the region along the border of Brazil and Venezuela. In collaboration with the Yanomami, European and Brazilian media artists, composers, sociologists, and anthropologists have been developing the concept for “Amazonas – Music theatre in three parts” since 2006. The multimedia music theatre project, a co-production by the Goethe-Institute, Munich Biennale, ZKM Karlsruhe, SESC São Paulo, Hutukara Associação Yanomami, and Teatro Nacional de São Carlos aims to include current scientific knowledge and Indian cosmology and spirituality as equal partners. “The project neither glorifies nor slanders indigenous culture. On the internet are sufficient examples of such one-sided documents dealing with beautiful feather headdresses or the evil murder of children. Instead, sought here is a true partnership. As impressive as the rituals of the Yanomami may be to watch, one will search for them in vain on the stage of this project. The guiding principle is to refrain from looking at indigenous cultures as though at an element in the exotic diversity of species, and instead, in a contemporary dialogue with indigenous experts, to steer our view together to the rain forest,” says Joachim Bernauer, director of the Goethe-Institute Lisbon and project curator. The participating media artists and composers conceptually redevelop the term, “multimedia music theatre”: contemporary music theatre and media art flow together, music becomes visible, pictures and data audible. Artistic contributions emerge that allow the audience to see and listen to the Amazonian world in a way never before possible. As Peter Weibel, CEO, ZKM explains, “We ask, how music theatre as fusion of language, music, movement, and picture, space, and time, as fusion of all media and genres of art, thus as a first genuine multimedia work, can be further developed, and, indeed, do so in connection with so-called new media. Thus, playing central roles are virtuality—artificial environments that simulate the natural environment perfectly, but can also transcend it—and interactivity—a mutual reaction of picture and observer, of sound and listener.” “Amazonas – Music Theatre in Three Parts,” will premiere on 8 May 2010 at the twelfth Munich Biennale, whose motto is: “From Another View.” Peter Ruzicka, artistic director of the festival: “Confronting one another in the Amazonas music theatre in three artistically independent parts are the European appropriating view, the indigenous preserving view, and the inquisitive view into the future. Using all of modern music theatre’s virtual and multimedia possibilities, the piece explores the aspects of ‘Amazonian pain’ which is how Peter Sloterdijk once identified the fear of the devastating loss, and the Amazon’s future.” After the premiere, “Amazonas – Music Theatre in Three Parts” will play until 12 May in Munich and from 21 to 25 July in São Paulo. Further performances are planned for Lisbon in October, and parts of the music theatre will be shown in Rotterdam. A broad educational program for children and teens accompanies the creation of Amazonas music theatre. The core is an online platform with information and teaching material on the themes of music theatre and multimedia, and on issues related to the preservation of indigenous cultures and the rain forest. The internet program also includes games, forums, and a cartoon contest for students. In individual project classes at selected Munich schools experts from the educational program will deal in greater depth with the topics of the rain forest, climate change, the Amazon, and Yanomami.

The website www.amazonas-musiktheatre.org offers articles on media art, new music, and climate change, picture series from the Amazonas production, videos about the creation of the music theatre, and interviews with the artists involved. In April, a video blog from ARTE will report on a journey to Brazil, to the Yanomami village Demini, at the beginning stages of the project. The blog is produced in the framework of a media cooperation with ARTE. “Amazonas – Music Theatre in Three Parts” is a co-production by the Goethe-Institute, Munich Biennale, ZKM Karlsruhe, SESC São Paulo, Hutukara Associação Yanomami, and Teatro Nacional São Carlos, Lisbon. Cooperation partners: Operadays Rotterdam and Netzzeit (Vienna). Sponsored by the Federal Cultural Foundation, the “CULTURE” program of the European Union, Deutsche Bank, and Fundaçao EDP. Media partners: ARTE, Deutschlandradio Kultur, RTP 2, and Antena 2.

The Music Theatre In three artistically self-contained parts, “Amazonas” tells of the climatic, political and cultural drama playing itself out everyday in Amazonia. The three composers, Klaus Schedl, Tato Taborda and Ludger Brümmer, create various soundscapes for the libretto by Roland Quitt (Parts I and II) and for the artistic concepts from the ZKM Centre for Art and Media (Part III). So “Amazonas” homes in on three dimensions of an issue that may decide a goodly portion of our global fate, casting a glance on the past, present and impending future of the Amazon region. Part I Klaus Schedl TILT

In a time after the end of time. Voices from afar join together to deliver a troubled report. It goes on till the machines switch off. The voices tell of the outrageous moment of a first encounter. They recount the nightmare of paradise, the horror of the nameless. They explain the need to replace nature with culture. They work themselves up into feverish visions of an artificial world in which man will ultimately become a machine made of gold. This piece is based on Sir Walter Raleigh’s expedition report The discoverie of the large rich and bewtiful empyre of Guaiana. Raleigh set off in 1595 with 40 men to explore the Orinoko. Near what is now the territory of the Yanomami Indians, he expected to find the place the Spanish called “El Dorado”. Tilt follows the subtextual tracks in Raleigh’s report that were to prove the basic patterns of European thinking. Written from the perspective of an early discoverer, he already anticipated the whole mindset of conquest, landgrabbing and colonization that was to follow – and hold sway to this very day. Libretto by Roland Quitt, music by Klaus Schedl Part II Tato Taborda A Queda do Céu (The Sky Is About to Fall) Don’t wait till you can see it! As a rule of survival in the rain forest, that goes for more than just the jaguar. The forest is impenetrable to the human eye, you’ve got to rely primarily on your ears to take your bearings. The shaman understands the voice of the forest, and the forest tells him a crack has appeared lately in the sky. The forest is the world, there is no point in trying to differentiate between the two, and the world is afflicted by a man-eating monster. It is invisible, descending with smoke and engine noise to devour people, devour their habitat, whilst the crack in the sky grows bigger. The monster’s agents are visible, however. They are ugly and fair-skinned, so they keep their flesh hidden under a second skin. They fight for abstract ideas and are passionate about useless objects. They think it would be a good idea to light up the Amazonian night with electricity. But doesn’t man need darkness to commune with himself? – A Queda do Céu (“The Sky is About to Fall”) explores how the southern Yanomami around Watoriki village explain the destruction of the Amazon region. The main source for the libretto is interviews with the indigenous population and their shamans. As advisor, interpreter and companion, the ethnologist Bruce Albert played a key part in putting this piece together; the second part is partly based on the book La Chute du Ciel (“The Sky Is About to Fall”) by Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert, published by PLON in Paris. Libretto by Roland Quitt, music by Tato Taborda

Part III Peter Weibel and Ludger Brümmer Amazonas-Conference. Awaiting a Suitable, Rational Solution to the Climate Problem In the mythology of the Yanomami, the trees produce songs that tell and keep their past, their future and their stories. The animals and spirits also speak to them through the trees. A vocal ensemble personifies the forest, giving it and the Yanomami Indians a voice. Music is conceived of here not as a composer’s invention, but as a “molecular composition” – transmuting information from the rain forest into sound, rendering the internal workings of this gigantic bio-organism acoustically and musically apprehensible. The central stage prop is a conference table, used as an audio-visual instrument, at which representatives of the political, business and scientific communities and the church deliberate on the issue of the Amazon. And this is where a gripping confrontation with the voices of the forest begins. Conception: Peter Weibel, Music: Ludger Brümmer, Visual Concept: Bernd Lintermann

Multimedia negotiations on the future of the Amazon: on part III of “Amazonas” Gathering on the stage for an “Amazonas Conference – Awaiting a Suitable, Rational Solution to the Climate Problem” in the like-named part III of “Amazonas” music theater are representatives from the Yanomami, from politics, business, and science, to negotiate the matter of the Amazon. A vocal ensemble embodies the forest and lends it and the Yanomami people a voice. Central stage element is an interactive conference table that transforms the arguments of the discussants into pictures and sounds and carries them into the audience space. The third part of “Amazonas” music theater originates at ZKM | Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, based on artistic ideas from ZKM CEO Peter Weibel. On the basis of scientific data, and visualization and sonification models, the complex levels of depiction and discussion of the Amazon as habitat and economic resource become accessible. A central motif of this multi-perspective and multimedia approach to the topic of the Amazon is the principle of “a parliament of things” (from French sociologist Bruno Latour): A theme is dealt with by giving the various parties an equal voice and creating a space for communication. For this purpose, special visual and acoustic applications have been developed at the two founding institutes of the ZKM, which combine in their interactivity, as feedback, the various levels of the theater’s space and what is happening. At the Institute for Visual Media, a multimedia stage set has been created whose core is a conference table through which the principle of negotiation becomes palpable. “During the performance, the interactive multitouch table will be used by the singers to generate visual information and sounds. Along with various aspects of representing content, a special challenge for music theater is the linking of interactive possibilities for action with a narrative structure,” explains Bernd Lintermann, director of the Institute for Visual Media at ZKM Karlsruhe who is responsible for the stage set. Closely tied with that, the ZKM Institute for Music and Acoustics will develop a real time sound environment for the composition by Ludger Brümmer. Used in this is the technology of the “Klangdom,” an installation comprising twenty-four loudspeakers stretching out over the audience like a dome. The music can thus be heard not only frontally, but also from above, below, and the sides—blurring the border between stage and audience space. There is no orchestra: the music by Ludger Brümmer is purely electronic and accompanies an eight-person vocal ensemble that embodies the rain forest. Their song confronts the words of the other protagonists as the “dispute” at Bernd Lintermann’s conference table is carried out, for the most part, in spoken form. Participants, Part III

Concept, text, and staging: Peter Weibel

Music and sound design: Ludger Brümmer, (ZKM | Institute for Music and Acoustics)

Visuals: Bernd Lintermann (ZKM | Institute for Visual Media)

Medial stage set: Bernd Lintermann, Nikolaus Völzow, Manuel Weber, Martin Schmidt

Electric Fish: José Wagner Garcia

Project management: Christiane Riedel

Project coordination, Dramaturgie: Julia Gerlach

Director stage technology and lighting: Manuel Weber

Development of interactive table: Matthias Wölfel

Development of stage projection: Nikolaus Völzow

Development of face animation: Martin Schmidt

Camera and video: Moritz Büchner, Christina Zartmann

Assistant, visual design: Stewart Smith

Sound projection: Sebastian Schottke

Real time sound environment: Jens Barth, Götz Dipper

Assistant director: Jan Gerigk

Research: Dominika Szope, Julia Gottschalk

Singers and actors: Nuno Dias, Moritz Eggert, Katia Guedes, Christian Kesten,

Mafalda de Lemos, Joåo Cipriano Martins, Phil Minton, Christian Zehnder, Jochen Strodthoff

Music director: Heinz Fiedl

Scientific support: German Development Institute (Dr. Imme

Scholz), Greenpeace (Martin Kaiser), Karlsruher Institute of Technology (PD. Dr. Axel

Schaffer), Max-Planck Institute for Chemistry Mainz (Prof. Dr. Meinrat O. Andreae), Potsdam

Institute for Climate Impact Research (Prof. Dr. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Dr. Veronika

Huber), Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Karlsruhe (Dr. Manfred Verhaagh)

The “Amazonas” educational program for children and teens Based on the explicit request of the Yanomami, who are decisively involved in the creation of “Amazonas” music theatre, the Goethe-Institute has worked out an educational program intended to make children in Germany, Portugal, and Brazil aware of the drastic situation of the rain forest and of the basic principles of indigenous life. Newly developed, theme-specific teaching material for teachers, an extensive online platform, and a cartoon contest are all part of the offer, making the world of the Amazon a conversation topic for school children and adults. “We introduce the Yanomami, one of the largest groups in South America that still lives largely according to tradition, as representative of an entire series of indigenous societies in the Amazon. Within the framework of what we can possibly do here, we attempt to take on the perspective of the indigenous people and try to arrive at an understanding of their world from the inside, outward. The Yanomami are shown as a cultural nation whose views of the world—precisely in their contrast to our moral ideas—are highly valuable.” says Gabriele Herzog-Schröder, ethnologist and expert on the Yanomami people at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich. Under her professional advice, the Goethe-Institut developed an educational program in the context of “Amazonas – Music theatre in three parts,” that should familiarize children and teens in Germany with the precarious situation of the Amazonian rain forest. The heart of the program is the comprehensive internet column “Campus” on the website www.amazonas-musiktheater.org. There, teachers and all who are interested can find a collection of downloadable materials suitable for students, providing current information on the topics: the destruction of the rain forest habitat, climate change, culture and way of life of indigenous groups. Above all, however, the forum is intended as a site for exchange among students, teachers, and all others interested in the topic. The forum should also create contact with the Yanomami: German students and Yanomami children and teens can chat about their everyday lives and thereby get to know one another’s culture and way of life. For the launch of the “Campus” column, a digital film contest will be announced that fosters the children’s and teen’s multimedia competence and rounds off the mediation of knowledge through a contemporary, creative challenge. Beginning in April, in project classes at selected Munich schools, experts from the educational program will deal in depth with the topics: rain forest, climate change, the Amazon, and the Yanomami. Interested schools in the Munich area can book speakers on the mentioned topics via the website, free of charge, for dates between the Easter and Pentecost holidays. Davi Kopenawa, shaman, and spokesperson for the Yanomami and two Yanomami teachers are awaited at the premiere. They will accompany several visits to project classes and school classes where they will report on their life in the Amazonian rainforest and answer students’ questions. Coordination: Annette Geller, Joachim Bernauer / cooperation: ISA (Instituto Socioambiental Manaus). For further information, see: column “Campus” on the www.amazonasmusiktheatre.org website.

Artists and Experts Numerous European and Brazilian media artists, composers, anthropologists, sociologists, and philosophers have worked since 2006 on the creation of the “Amazonas” music theatre. They combine the latest knowledge from science with current aesthetic developments in the fields of contemporary music theatre and media art. In this way, a new perspective is warranted the drastic situation in the Amazon region. An alphabetic overview of the key individuals involved in the “Amazonas” music theatre: Bruce Albert, anthropologist, research director at Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, Paris and associate researcher at Instituto Socioambiental, São Paulo: Of French nationality, Bruce Albert was born in Casablanca, Morocco, in 1952. He completed his studies in Paris with a doctorate in Social Anthropology in 1985 at University of Paris X-Nanterre. Fascinated by their culture and sense of humour he has worked with the Yanomami now for thirty-five years in Brazil. He published several books on the Yanomami culture. Slated for publication in September 2010 is also La chute du ciel. Paroles d'un chaman yanomami (Plon-Terre Humaine, Paris) co-authored with Davi Kopenawa, shaman and spokesperson for the Brazilian Yanomami. Since 2008, Bruce Albert has been an anthropological consultant and mediator with the Yanomami for the production of “Amazonas – Music theatre in three parts”. Joachim Bernauer, director of the Goethe-Institut in Lisbon: Joachim Bernauer was born in Schwäbisch Hall in 1961. He studied singing in Berlin and graduated with a PhD in literature. He has worked for the Goethe-Institut since 1993, from 1994 to 1998 at the Goethe-Institut Lisbon. His book Schöne Welt, wo bist du? Über das Verhältnis von Lyrik und Poetik bei Schiller was published 1995, two years later he published Portugiesische Lyrik seit Pessoa, deutsche Übersetzung von Joachim Bernauer und Curt Mayer-Clason (Tabacaria No. 4). He worked as director of the artists’ residence Villa Aurora in Los Angeles (USA) from 1999 to 2002. Subsequently, he worked for six years as program director at the Goethe-Institut São Paulo. In this function, he made possible numerous co-productions in the areas of theatre, dance, music, and the fine arts. He co-operated with directors such as Frank Castorf, Constanza Macras, Stefan Kaegi and Christoph Schlingensief. Joachim Bernauer has been director of the Goethe-Institut Portugal since September 2008. The international co-production of “Amazonas – Music theatre in three parts” arose from his initiative. Ludger Brümmer, composer and director of the Institute for Music and Acoustics at ZKM Karlsruhe: Ludger Brümmer was born in 1958. He studied composing under Nicolaus A. Huber and Dirk Reith at the Folkwang Hochschule Essen. He worked with the choreographer Susanne Linke and the Nederlands Dans Theatre from 1991 and 1992. He performed with them at the computer music conferences in San José, Tokyo, Banff, and Thessalonica. Brümmer was a lecturer at the electronic studio, TU Berlin; at the Institut Archimedia in Linz; and at ICEM of the Folkwang Hochschule Essen. He was a research fellow at Kingston University London and professor for composition at the Sonic Art Research Centre in Belfast from 2000 to 2002. He has been director of the Institute for Music and Acoustics at ZKM in Karlsruhe since April 2003. Brümmer has been honored with numerous prizes for his work, including the Folkwang prize Essen, Busoni prize from the Akademie der Künste Berlin, the Goldenen Nica at Ars Electronica, and the Grand Prix – Pierre d'or in Bourges. Ludger Brümmer is responsible for the musical design of the third part of “Amazonas” music theatre. Laymert Garcia dos Santos, professor of philosophy and sociology at Campinas University, São Paulo: Born in São Paulo in 1948, he studied journalism, sociology, information and documentation science in Rio de Janeiro and Paris. He completed his habilitation at Campinas University, where he also began his academic career as assistant professor in the faculty of education. He was a guest lecturer at Oxford in 1992. Laymert Garcia dos Santos has published numerous scientific articles and books. One research focus of dos Santos's work is the relationship between technology and environment, especially, the

issue of intellectual property rights and the traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples of Amazonia, for whom he is also politically engaged. From 1997 to 2000, dos Santos was head of the Pro-Yanomami commission CCPY. Since September 2009, he is a Director of the São Paulo Biennial Foundation for Contemporary Art. Laymert Garcia dos Santos worked on the overall concept of the “Amazonas” music theatre. Davi Kopenawa, shaman and spokesman for the Yanomami: Davi Kopenawa was born around 1956 in Marakana, a Yanomami community in the Brazilian state of Amazonas, northern Amazon. In the 1950s and 1960s, visits by military Brazilian Border Commission and US-based New Tribes Mission missionaries brought fatal diseases in this isolated region. Davi Kopenawa's community was decimated and most of his family died in the epidemics which swept through the area. Remembering this childhood tragedy, Davi Kopenawa began to fight during the 1980s for the legal recognition and protection of the vast area inhabited by the Yanomami in the Brazilian states of Roraima and Amazonas. Gold panners were invading now the whole region, and thousands of Yanomami were again dying from the white people diseases to which they had no resistance. His struggle has taken him to many countries, where he strongly plead for the cause of the Yanomami. The Yanomami territory covering over 9.6 million hectares was finally legally recognized by the Brazilian government in 1992. Today Davi Kopenawa lives in Watoriki, his in-laws collective house in the Northern Amazon, practicing actively shamanism and continuing to play a crucial role in battling for his people's rights in Brazil and internationally. In 2004, with other Yanomami leaders, he founded the Yanomami rights organization Hutukara and is currently Hutukara's president. Bernd Lintermann, media artist and director of the Institute for Visual Media at ZKM Karlsruhe: Bernd Lintermann was born in Düsseldorf in 1967. He studied computer science in Karlsruhe and has since worked as an artist and scientist in the area of real-time computer graphics with a special concentration on interactive and generative systems. His works include computer-generated images, interactive installations, and project environments; they are exhibited throughout the world in museums, and as part of festivals, for example, at the ICC Inter Communication Center in Tokyo, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, ZKM Karlsruhe, the ISEA and DEAF festivals, and the Ars Electronica. He collaborates with internationally renowned artists, such as Bill Viola, Peter Weibel, and Jeffrey Shaw, and has created works for the CAVE TM Environment and for dome-shaped and panoramic projection environments. Bernd Lintermann has been director of the Institute for Visual Media at ZKM Karlsruhe since 2005 and a professor at the Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) Karlsruhe since 2006. He developed the stage set for the third part of “Amazonas” music theatre together with Peter Weibel. Roland Quitt, dramaturgist, Mannheim: Roland Quitt is a freelance dramaturgist. He studied music, German, and philosophy at the Freie Universität Berlin and has worked at various theatres as a dramaturgist in the area of music theatre and drama. For twelve years now, the main focus of his work has been in the area of contemporary forms of music theatre beyond the opera. At the Theatre Bielefeld he founded the series “visible music” and was responsible for the idea and planning of more than twenty premieres in the area of contemporary music theatre. He continued this work at the National Theatre Mannheim. As dramaturgist in the area of contemporary music theatre, he has worked with respected ensembles and important composers, such as Vinko Globokar, Dieter Schnebel, Frederik Rzewksi, Manos Tsangaris, and Iris ter Schiphorst. Roland Quitt is the acting president of the music theatre committee in the ITI, the UNESCO’s theatre organization, and curator as well as jury member of the international competition for new music theatre “Music Theatre NOW.” Roland Quitt wrote the libretti for the first and second parts of “Amazonas” music theatre. Klaus Schedl, composer, Munich: Klaus Schedl was born in Stuttgart in 1966. He studied composing under Hans-Jürgen von Bose at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and at the Staatlichen Hochschule für Musik und Theatre in Munich. He founded the Munich ensemble for new music, piano possible in 1993. He was a guest lecturer in Portugal in 1998, at the Konservatorium Coimbra and elsewhere. He moved to London in 1999, two years later a grant from the Free State of Bavaria brought him to Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris.

He was granted a music grant in 1996 and 2003 and a project grant for new media in 2005 from the State Capital Munich for City Scan: München, which premiered in 2006 as part of the Munich Biennial for New Music Theatre. Klaus Schedl now lives in Munich. He composed the music for the first part of “Amazonas” music theatre. Michael Scheidl, director and artistic director of netzzeit, Vienna: Michael Scheidl was born in Vienna in 1954. He graduated from the Max-Reinhardt-Seminar in Vienna as an actor in 1979; he then had engagements at the Landestheater Saarbrücken and at the Vereinigten Bühnen Krefeld Mönchengladbach. He returned to Vienna in 1983 and in the following years worked as an actor, producer, and director in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, Italy, and Brazil. Together with his wife Nora, he founded netzzeit in 1984, an organization for the realization of theatre projects. Michael Scheidl has staged plays in Vienna, Munich, Lucerne, Lübeck, Salzburg, Budapest, and elsewhere. Since the 1990s, contemporary music theatre has played a central role in Michael Scheidl’s artistic work. Michael Scheidl is director of the first and second parts of “Amazonas” music theatre. Tato Taborda, composer, São Paulo: Tato Taborda was born in Curitiba in 1960. He studied under Hans-Joachim Koellreutter, Raymond Murray Schafer, and Helmut Lachenmann, among others. In 1980, Tato Taborda founded the music ensemble Grupo Juntos-Música Nova, which is devoted to the entire repertoire of young Latin American composers. He presents his own compositional works at various international festivals for new music: the Donaueschinger Musiktagen, the MaerzMusik: Festival für aktuelle Musik, the Munich Biennale, and the Résonance Contemporaine. In Brazil he curated several festivals for contemporary music, including Escuta! (1998/2000), Música de Invenção (1995), Fronteiras (1999), and Diálogos (2002). In 2004 he received his doctorate in bioacoustics and polyphone strategies. Tato Taborda composed the music for the second part of “Amazonas” music theatre. José Wagner Garcia, architect and media artist, São Paulo: José Wagner Garcia was born in São Paulo in 1956 where he studied architecture, design, and semiotics and communications. He received his PhD in art and biosemiotics. He was a grantee at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Center for Advanced Visual Studies from 1988 to 1991. He conducted research at the Santa Fé Institute in 2001. José Wagner Garcia has designed more than 250 buildings in his work as an architect; he has realized numerous art film projects, and published the book Amazing Amazon – Evolutionary Aesthetics. Today he works mainly as an architect and media artist. José Wagner Garcia’s artistic concepts are key impulses motivating the development of the “Amazonas” music theatre. Peter Weibel, CEO of ZKM Karlsruhe: Peter Weibel was born in Odessa in 1944. He studied literature, film, mathematics, medicine, and philosophy in Vienna and Paris. He began his first guest professorship for design theory and visual education at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna in 1981. He was then a guest lecturer at the College of Art and Design in Halifax, Canada, and at the Gesamthochschule in Kassel. Peter Weibel was appointed director of the Institute for New Media at the Städelschule in Frankfurt/Main in 1989, CEO of ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, in 1999. Peter Weibel has had many engagements as artistic consultant and head curator: He has been the artistic director of the Ars Electronica in Linz since 1992, he was Austria’s commissioner for the Venice Biennale from 1993 to 1996, artistic director of the Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum in Graz, and artistic director of the Sevilla Biennale Biacs3 in 2008. Peter Weibel has received many honors for his work and has been awarded, among others, the Siemens Media Art Prize, the Käthe Kollwitz Prize, and the Medal of Merit of the State of Baden-Württemberg. Peter Weibel worked on the concept of the third part of the “Amazonas” music theatre. …..u.v.m.

Partners Goethe-Institut For over fifty years, the Goethe Institute has been the cultural institute of the Federal Republic of Germany worldwide. Its aims are to encourage international cultural cooperation, promote study of the German language abroad, and mediate an all-around picture of Germany. As an autonomous body, in its politically-independent project work, the Goethe-Institut links its intercultural and professional competence with the experiences of its international partners. In more than eighty countries, the Goethe-Institut’s cultural projects confront the politico-cultural challenges brought about by globalization and develop concepts for a more humane world achieved through understanding, whereby cultural diversity is recognized as a valuable asset. The Goethe-Institut promotes the quality of the German language throughout the world, allowing the participants in its courses to attain competence in German at the highest level. The Goethe-Institut’s libraries offer extensive information about cultural, social, and political life in Germany. In Brazil, the Goethe Institute is present at five locations: Curitiba, Porto Alegre, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador Bahia, and São Paulo. For the “Amazonas” music theatre, the headquarters in Munich and the institutes in São Paulo and Lisbon are cooperating. www.goethe.de

Hutukara Associação Yanomami The Hutukara Associação Yanomami is the lobby of the Yanomami Indians, the indigenous population living in the Amazon area between Brazil and Venezuela. The association was founded on 12 November 2004 in Watoriki, a Yanomami village in the Serra do Vento in Brazil. Dário Vitório Yanomami, one of the founding members, writes about the group’s concept: “We Yanomami decided to select this name, because Hutukara is what keeps us alive—like the rivers and the forest. Hutukara gives us life, as it did our ancestors before us. For that reason, we defend Hutukara. And why did we found this association? To defend our land. In the time of the old sky, before history, Hutukara came down to shape today’s forest. It is the name of the same earth-sky that the Omama [the Yanomami demiurge] set and left to us since the very beginning. For that reason, we Yanomami have chosen the name Hutukara and now we would like to carry it everywhere, so that you can meet him, too.” www.proyanomami.org.br

Munich Biennale In 1988, Hans Werner Henze, in collaboration with the Bavarian capital of Munich, successfully organized a festival unique throughout the world, the Munich Biennale – International Festival of New Music Theater. Premiers of new operas, usually the first works by young composers in this area, are imbedded in a context with concerts, symposia, and composer talks. Presentation, reflection, and discussion interact in this new music theater laboratory. In 1996, Peter Ruzicka took over responsibility for the festival. Since the beginning, of special importance has been the festival’s internationality—in terms of invited composers, librettists, and interpreters, and also with regard to the diverse cultural traditions that bring here their impulses for a new modernism, and in terms of the cooperations, which assure wide circulation of the presented works and the festival’s representation in press and media. www.muenchenerbiennale.de

Servico Social do Comércio São Paulo (SESC SP) The social and cultural project of the Brazilian trade SESC was founded by trade and service firms in 1947 as a cultural and educational political initiative. In its work, SESC emphasizes the role of education as a requirement for social change. Every year it develops in this context numerous projects for different ages and social classes in the areas of culture, education, health, tourism, and sport. In the federal state of São Paulo, the SESC maintains a network of 31 cultural and sports centers. Offered in addition are programs in the area of social tourism, health care, and environmental education, as well as special programs for children and seniors. Leading the way are both Mesa Brasil SESC São Paulo, a program for battling hunger and the fight against wasting food, and the project Internet Livre, an initiative for free access to information. www.sescsp.org.br

Teatro Nacional de São Carlos (TNSC) The Portuguese National Opera São Carlos opened on 30 June 1793 as the royal theater São Carlos. The opera house had to be rebuilt following the devastating earthquake of 1755. Since 1799, women have also been allowed to perform on this stage. Due to the civil war, the opera was closed from 1828 to 1834. The switch was made to gas lighting in 1850, and electric lighting was already introduced in 1833—on the occasion of the premiere of Wagner’s Lohengrin. All major international opera composers have celebrated their success in Lisbon. The opera, which from 1912 to 1920 could offer hardly any productions, was closed and renovated in 1935. The reopening was celebrated in December 1940. For the 150th anniversary celebration in 1943, exclusively Portuguese productions were featured. The regular seasonal operation resumed in 1946. The ensemble was first set up in 1974. Since 2007 the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos shares, as part of Opart, a roof institutionally with the Companhia Nacional de Bailado founded in 1977 and the symphony orchestra founded in 1982 (today Orquestra Sinfónica Portuguesa). An opera studio will be set up during the 2009/2010 season. www.saocarlos.pt ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe The ZKM is a cultural institution unique throughout the world. It reacts to the rapid development of art, information technology, and the transformation of social structures. In its work, ZKM unites production and research, exhibition and event, mediation and documentation. Through the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Media Museum, the Institute for Visual Media, the Institute for Music and Acoustics and the Institute for Media, Education, and Economics, ZKM has access to diverse possibilities for the development of interdisciplinary projects and international cooperation. Under the direction of Peter Weibel since 1999, ZKM has confronted new media in theory and practice, sounding out their potential with its own designs, introducing examples of possible uses, and critically confronting the formation of information society. ZKM considers itself a platform for experiment and discussion with its goal and task of actively participating in future-oriented work and constantly re-questioning the meaningful use of technology. www.zkm.de

Performance dates and participants

Performance dates

Munich (as part of the 12th Munich Biennale):

www.muenchenerbiennale.de

8 May 2010 (premiere)

9 May 2010

10 May 2010

11 May 2010

12 May 2010

Venue:

Reithalle Munich

Heßstrasse 132

80797 Munich

www.reithalle-muenchen.de

Additional activities involving “Amazonas – music theatre in three parts” at the Munich Biennale:

Friday, 7 May 2010, 5 to 7 p.m.

Amzonas and Music Theatre: A Challenge

Panel Discussion and Composers Talk

Introduction: Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, President of the Goethe-Institut

Part I

Panel Discussion with Bruce Albert, Anthropologist, Davi Kopenawa, Shaman and

Spokesman for the Yanomami, Joachim Bernauer, Project Curator, and Laymert Garcia dos

Santos, Socologist

Host: Christoph Bartmann, Goethe-Institut

Part II

Talk with the composers Tato Taborda, Klaus Schedl, and Ludger Brümmer

Host: Peter Ruzicka, Munich Biennale

Location:

Goethe-Forum

Dachauer Straße 122

80637 Munich

Free Admission

Saturday, 9 May 2010, 11 a.m.

Interdisciplinary symposium at the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts with Peter

Sloterdijk, Siegfried Mauser, and several artists and composers from the “Amazonas”

music theatre.

Introduction: Klaus-Dieter Lehmann

11 a.m. to noon

“Der klagende Orpheus” – a dialogue

Siegfried Mauser in conversation with Peter Sloterdijk

Noon to 1 p.m.

Panel discussion with Siegfried Mauser, Michael Scheidl, Peter Sloterdijk, and Peter

Weibel,

Host: Peter Ruzicka

Location:

Bavarian Academy of the Fine Arts

Max-Joseph-Platz 3

80539 Munich

Free admission

Tickets for all events can be ordered at www.muenchenticket.de or by telephone: +49 (0) 180

– 54 81 81 81

Rotterdam:

29 May 2010

30 May 2010

Organizer: Operadays Rotterdam (www.operarotterdam.nl )

Venue:

Rotterdamse Schouwburg

Schouwburgplein 25

3012 CL Rotterdam

www.schouwburg.rotterdam.nl

(Only part of the music theatre will be shown in Rotterdam)

São Paulo:

21 July 2010

22 July 2010

23 July 2010

24 July 2010

25 July 2010

Organizer: SESC São Paulo (www.sescsp.org.br)

Venue:

SESC Pompéia

rua Clélia, 93

Pompéia

São Paulo - SP

www.sescsp.org.br

Further performances are planned for October in Lisbon.

Participants:

Overall project

Artistic production Peter Ruzicka, Peter Weibel, Laymert Garcia dos Santos

Consultants Bruce Albert, Davi Kopenawa, Siegfried Mauser

Project initiative Joachim Bernauer, José Wagner Garcia

Part I / TILT

Music Klaus Schedl

Text and dramaturgy Roland Quitt (after Walter Raleigh)

Direction Michael Scheidl

Stage and costume Nora Scheidl

Video Bernd Lintermann

Light Norbert Joachim

Composition commission from the provincial capital Munich for the Munich Biennale

Part II / A Queda do Céu (The Sky is about to Fall)

Idea Tato Taborda & Roland Quitt

Music, samples Tato Taborda

Text and Dramaturgy Roland Quitt

Direction Michael Scheidl

Stage and costume Nora Scheidl

Video Leandro Lima and Gisela Motta

Light Norbert Joachim

Acoustics Paolo Mariangeli

Composition commission from the SESC São Paulo and the provincial capital Munich

Part III / Amazonas-Conference. Awaiting a Suitable, Rational Solution to the Climate

Problem

Concept, text, and staging Peter Weibel

Project director Christiane Riedel

Project Coordination and Julia Gerlach

Dramaturgy

Music Ludger Brümmer

ZKM | Institute for Music and Acoustics

Image Bernd Lintermann

ZKM | Institute for Visual Media

Media stage design Bernd Lintermann, Nikolaus Völzow, Manuel Weber

Electric Fish José Wagner Garcia

Musical direction Heinz Friedl

Participants João Cipriano, Nuno Dias, Moritz Eggert, Katia Guedes,

Christian Kesten, Mafalda de Lemos, Phil Minton, Christian

Zehnder

piano possibile

Instrumentalists from the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos

Co-production Munich Biennale, Goethe-Institut, ZKM | Center for Art and

Media Karlsruhe, SESC São Paulo, Hutukara Associação

Yanomami, Portuguese State Opera São Carlos (Lisbon)

Cooperation partner Operadays Rotterdam, Netzzeit (Vienna)

Sponsored by German Federal Cultural Foundation

Program “Culture” of the European Commission

Deutsche Bank

Fundação EDP (Lisbon)

Media Partners ARTE, Deutschlandradio Kultur, Antena 2, RTP 2

Many thanks for their hospitality and committed cooperation to the inhabitants of Demini (Watoriki), especially Davi Kopenawa (shaman and president of the Hutukara Assosiacao Yanomami) and Lourival Yanomami (shaman and village eldest), an to shamans Ari Pakidari Yanomami from Ajuricaba, André Yanomami and Lewi Hewakalaxima Yanomami from Toototobi, to Geraldo Kuisitheri Yanomami (social worker and camera man, Toototobi), as well as Dário Vitório Yanomami (teacher and treasurer of Hutukara Associacao Yanomami, Boa Vista).

The composers on their works Tato Taborda from Brazil, Klaus Schedl from Munich, and Ludger Brümmer, director of the Institute for Music and Acoustics at ZKM | Center for Art and Media, on their compositions for the three parts of the Amazonas music theater: The main idea guiding my composition of “TILT,” the first part of Amazonas music theater, is destruction: Destruction and the mechanism inevitably moving toward it—a spiral of land seizure and possession, categorical belief in progress and predominance. This applies to the current deforestation of the Amazon as well as to all other destruction of nature, people, and thoughts. Musically, I therefore depict mainly the filth and the destructive maelstrom of this addiction to advancement. A maelstrom that should also most definitely be felt physically through the music. For this I first create large audible “trash hills.” I layer innumerable sound data sets—large and small ones—on top of one another; a method that can be achieved only with digital help. Acoustic material blocks form, which depending on the sound data are either more porous or more solid. Like a sculptor, I strip away layers, bit by bit, thus allowing acoustic and time-dependent structures to come into being. These could remain present in all their depth, or end up as a tone or pulse. By virtue of the impenetrable complexity of this acoustic block of material, or sound heap, I consciously withdraw from the possibility of a “normal” classical means of composition, which as a rule puts together music from individual building blocks (tones, sinus tones). Instead, I enter into a situation in which I have only my (auditory)perception as a base to create musical structures. “TILT” is effectively an opera “intercepted” from the acoustic material.

Klaus Schedl about “TILT,” part I of “Amazonas” On stage, we let a labyrinth form as metaphor for the rain forest, for the visions and the brain of the shaman. The audience and the artist share this space. Just like in the Amazonian forest, it is dark; ears become eyes. They determine perception and help people handle the rain forest adventure, and in extreme cases, help with survival. After all, as the Yanomami told us: do not wait until you can see the jaguar. The dark labyrinth becomes a sensual experience. Yanomami myths are told. The voice of a shaman conveyed by twenty-four loudspeakers, leads the audience through the space, at the end of which lurks Xawara, the spirit of disaster, epidemics, and death. For the Yanomami, Xawara reveals himself as smoke, which streams from the poisonous and destructive machines of the white man. The mission of the shaman is to drive away Xawara and avoid the ultimate catastrophe, the sky falling down. The brass section and drums become the voice of Xawara who drives three human characters through the labyrinth—three manifestations of evil: politicians greedy for land and gold, scientists in search of new knowledge, and missionaries who want to convert “lost souls.” The precision with which this triad moves through the rain forest, driven on by the violent voice of Xawara, seems to make the sky’s fall inevitable.

Tato Taborda on “O Queda do Céu” (The Sky is about to Fall), part II of “Amazonas” The origins of the Amazonas music theater reflect an entirely unconventional process. Contrary to the otherwise common process of arriving at the staging from the libretto through the music, here, the development of the techniques used, the content, as well as the music, text, and image are intermeshed. This reduces the music’s initial power as sole dramaturgical source for the staging, but places all of the means used as equals, next to one another, and interlocks them. The music theater grows from a collective and interdisciplinary practice. Electronic sounds musically confront a singer-octet, languages, and spoken world. With the help of a “Klangdom” comprising twenty-four loudspeakers distributed throughout the audience space, the sounds stretch out above the listeners, dissolve the frontal stage situation and take on an independent dramaturgical role. Like cellular slot machines, mathematic algorithms of the Game of Life ring out, which simulate the life and death of populations and in doing so, transport a central message of the Amazonas matter.

Ludger Brümmer on “Amazonas conference. Awaiting a Suitable, Rational Solution to the Climate Problem,” part III of “Amazonas”

Opera Reloaded – An Interview with Peter Weibel Is opera a copy of the musical? How does molecular music sound? And why are those who want to save the planet in the minority? An interview with Peter Weibel, media artist and director of the ZKM, about the Amazonas and the opera in the year 2009. The “Amazonas Music Theatre” will be a multimedia opera, adding new media to the classic blend of opera elements – language, music, dance and pictures. What opportunities does this open up? Ever since it was created by Claudio Monteverdi, opera has always been a multimedia work. It has always contained three different media – pictures, text and music. Added to these are dance and theatre. People have often failed to recognize the nature of opera; specifically, whenever they have defined it as being non-multimedia in character. The Amazonas Music Theatre is our attempt to revive the original idea behind the opera, namely to combine several media. The world has not stood still since Monteverdi’s time, and it is my opinion that art should not exclude itself from the modern age. If we wish to make contemporary art works, we should work with the resources available to us. The Impressionists expressed the same idea: “We wish to make art of our time using the resources of our time”. If we now have new audiovisual media at our disposal – moving pictures and more sophisticated ways of deploying light and computers – we should take advantage of these in order to continue the tradition of the opera while at the same time bringing it up to date. Is sufficient advantage taken of these possibilities in today’s opera productions? Not at all. Opera is making itself voluntarily obsolete. It is voluntarily excluding itself from the modern age. The only thing that is frequently used these days in theatre and in opera are video projections as immaterial stage scenery. That is far too little. Nowadays, the famous circus companies like Cirque du Soleil have far surpassed conventional municipal theatres and opera houses in terms of stage and lighting technology and props. Even the notorious musical is a step ahead of classic opera in this sense. Starlight Express springs to mind, where the protagonists race around on rollerblades – and suddenly I see that our opera stars are starting to move around too. Opera is trying in a very cautious way to adapt to the dynamism of a modern musical. The result is that poor Ms Netrebko ends up having first to stand on a table on stage, and must then recline on a sofa. This is a Biedermeier-style adaptation to the contemporary musical. In the Amazonas Music Theatre we return to the original question asked of an opera, namely what is a choir? and reply: the audience is the choir. In turn, the choir represents the rain forest, so the audience is the rain forest. And if we destroy the rain forest, we destroy ourselves. How can the audience become the choir? Thanks to the technological possibilities offered by new media. I don’t want to give any more away than that.

What is your part in the “Amazonas” Music Theatre? I organize a conference on the stage. Relationships behind human beings have always played the main role in opera. Someone has died, and others are lamenting his or her death. This has been the motif ever since Eurydice and Orpheus, and it is no different in the Amazonas Music Theatre. In this case, however, it is not a person who has died, but the Amazonas. We also have the classic opera debate – you love me, you love me not – but instead of lovers the debate takes place between economists, politicians, scientists and shamans. If you wish to find out how much air and how much water the Amazonas produces, how many people live off this air and water, and what happens when this supply of air and water is reduced, no satisfactory answers can be found. Around the conference table of the Amazonas Music Theatre, scientific arguments are put forward. The economists, for example, will say: “We must grow soya beans and we must cut down trees”. One after another, they will all explain their reasons, and at the end we will see that no solution will be found. And the audience becomes aware of the threat to the Amazonas. Is your goal to achieve a cathartic effect for the audience? The goal is a catharsis. However, I try to bring about this cathartic effect not through emotion but through knowledge, through information. When the curtain falls, the audience should be able to say: “Now we finally understand what is actually happening in the Amazonas”. After all, it is a fact that if we do not solve the Amazonas problem we will not be able to solve a single climate problem in the next 50 years. You once criticized the “European view” with its orientation towards the western modern age, and the fact that we look at something from outside rather than listening to the voices coming from inside. The Yanomamö, an indigenous tribe of Amazonas people, are co-producers of the Amazonas opera production. How do you work together with the Yanomamö? At the conference table on stage, a representative of the Yanomamö will put forward the arguments on behalf of his tribe. If he says: “We hear the voices of ghosts from the trees”, we will not simply answer: “That is 2,000 year old shamanism and doesn’t count”. We will take the arguments of the Yanomamö seriously and give them the same weight as we do those of the economists, politicians and scientists. Furthermore, we wish to show that the Yanomamö have created something rather like virtual worlds. Every space is full of messages. By taking measured amounts of drugs, the Yanomamö have developed a technique which allows them to hear these messages. We need a telephone to do this, and can only receive voices with the aid of an antenna. The Yanomamö, on the other hand, can produce this antenna inside themselves. The third act of the music theatre, which you co-wrote with the composer Ludger Brümmer, features molecular music. How does molecular music sound? When a composer asks himself what nature sounds like, he will normally think of the rustling of the trees or the babbling of a brook, and will compose his music accordingly. I assume, however, that the language of nature is mathematics. There are mathematical

computation techniques known as the “game of life”. They are based on genetic algorithms which can simulate growth in real time. Molecular music is created when these genetic algorithms are translated into note sequences. In other words, the music is not written according to the composer’s imagination, but according to the laws and principles of mathematics. Whether this music sounds good or bad is another question which, to be honest, does not interest me in the least. I am interested only in finding a different type of music. What fascinated you most about the project? Why did you get involved in it? For two reasons. For one thing, I have long been searching for suitable discussion partners and, in Peter Ruzicka, the director of the Munich Biennale, have found someone who, like myself, would like to update opera through the use of new media. Many arts scholars are currently focusing on this question – Slavoj Žižek, Peter Sloterdijk and Friedrich Kittler, for instance. The Amazonas Music Theatre has given me the opportunity to put some of my ideas into practice. For another thing, I am planning to launch a major project on the subject of art and climate at the end of 2011. We already presented an exhibition in Paris with the Fondation Cartier, and are staging an installation on this theme at the G12 summit in Copenhagen in December 2009. Why is the group of those who want to save the planet in the minority? This is a great mystery to me. The friends of the earth should really be in the majority. We must try to turn this minority into a majority. That is my second area of interest.

The interview was held by Verne Hütter.

The Amazonas Enterprise Joachim Bernauer, director Goethe-Instituts Lisbon and project curator Is it really so important in Munich, São Paulo, or Lisbon to know what is happening in the Amazon? As a rule, our so-called Western world is satisfied with vague knowledge, a mixture of curiosity at the paradisiacal diversity of species and repugnance over the murderous and ecologically devastating slash and burn policies. We admire the Amazonian basin as the myth machine of Manaus, Eldorado, and Fitzcarraldo, and we are seized by an unbelievable shudder reading reports in the news about native inhabitants who have had no contact whatsoever to modern civilization. In light of the genuine threat of a climate catastrophe brought about by our civilization, an entire series of questions central to humanity is posed with regard to the Amazon. As representatives of Western civilization, we have to recognize that we are the destructive wild beasts to whom the immense forests and innumerable peoples fall victim. “Primitive” is the European who does not understand indigenous cosmology as a high-class knowledge culture. In the Amazon basin we recognize the significance of an entirely different civilization that looks back at us with the eyes of the indigenous peoples—a contemporary counter model to our proud, techno-scientific culture. Those who look further into the issue soon stumble upon the borders of validity of Western certainties as expressed in fundamental and natural laws. The destruction of the rain forest environment in the Amazon basin is advancing dramatically. The basin is a meeting point for gold diggers and ethnologists, environmental protectionists and bio pirates, human rights activists and drug barons, for destitute river dwellers and masters over gigantic soy plantations, for artists, politicians, cultural workers, and theologians, and for an army of scientists—a centrifuge of contradictory elements, with no graspable axis of evil. Working out the complexity of this tragedy for the stage is likewise overwhelming, and does not fit into any picturesque tragic love story. The initiators, artists, and producers of the Amazonas project have therefore, from the outset, understood the music theater to be developed for this as a platform that allows a diversity of perspectives, which go beyond the usual dimensions of the opera, in terms of content and aesthetics. The daring incompatibility of artistic and worldly views should thus be understood as a quality that is steadily newly defined. The Goethe Institute, whose profession and passion is mediation between worlds, can often handle the tension that exists between important positions, a tension that would be nearly unbearable in the direct contact of those involved. Developing on this platform is a trilogy of antagonisms, a piece with a common artistic concern that treads three very different musical and conceptual paths. The first part is a musically drastic and in terms of content, tragic, localization by the Europeans’ who from the outset define the Amazon as a Garden of Eden that they feel free to unscrupulously devastate along with its inhabitants—yet whose destruction also puts themselves in danger of demise. The second part then leads us with respect and sensitivity into the midst of the world of the indigenous people, showing us the manifold threats they face, from the perspective of the Yanomami whose efforts to halt the catastrophe (the crashing down of the sky) are ultimately futile. Thus sensitized to an awareness of our own perception and that of others, in the third part, the audience is witness to and participant in a multimedia conference in which the fate of the Amazon is at stake. Understanding and meaning are now challenged in an entirely new way; molecular music is visualized and digital images ring out, while data-supported knowledge becomes an aesthetic experience. No member of the audience will leave the theater with the same perception of the Amazon as the one they entered with. It is no surprise that Amazonas sounds like musical drama. Ever since Werner Herzog’s film Fitzcarraldo, the connection of opera music with the original recordings of the Amazon, with pictures of the rain forest and the native inhabitants has merged for the Western world to a permanent unity. What is new is the approach of bringing our current knowledge about the drama that is playing out in the Amazon onto the stage in its full

complexity, and in doing so, to not be limited to the perspective of the techno-scientific world, but to also represent indigenous knowledge. Uncovered by this is a perhaps unexpected structural affinity between media art and shamanism. In both cases at issue is a high tech process of dealing with sounds and images, the targeted visualization of complex ideas. The shaman operates a precise audiovisual download, receiving sounds that evoke images (spirits). Amazonas Music Theater marks the start of a dialogue between the virtual world of media technology and the spiritual world of shamanism. The project neither glorifies nor slanders indigenous culture. On the internet are sufficient examples of such one-sided documents dealing with beautiful feather headdresses or the evil murder of children. Instead, sought here is a true partnership. As impressive as the rituals of the Yanomami may be to watch, one will search for them in vain on the stage of this project. The guiding principle is to refrain from looking at indigenous cultures as though at an element in the exotic diversity of species, and instead, in a contemporary dialogue with indigenous experts, to steer our view together to the rain forest. For that, common work meetings were necessary. That could and can be achieved only through a long-term partnership that enables lasting trust. Thus, what cannot be appreciated enough in this project is the cooperation of anthropologists and sociologists who have stood side-by-side with the Yanomami as friends for decades. An especially reliable institutional base is necessary for the successful development and production of such a complex and daring venture. The common interest in artistic innovation brings together the German triad of the Munich Biennale, ZKM Karlsruhe, and the Goethe-Institute (Munich, São Paulo, Lisbon), the two Brazilian partners SESC São Paulo and Hutukara Associação Yanomami, as well as the Portuguese National Opera in Lisbon—a group that works together passionately. Major enterprises currently place great value on fostering their relationships with their stakeholders through a politically correct dialogue on social and environmental sustainability, in order to comply with the so-called Stakeholder Engagement Standard. If we imagine the Amazon as major enterprise—the many stakeholders are quickly identifiable, yet what remains unclear are the property relations. The current owners, the Yanomami, for example, have entirely different ideas about property than the ideas common in the Western world. Who will define the future policies for this enterprise? Who will guarantee sustainability here? Which investments are legitimate, which ones do stakeholders use or damage—in the short or long term? We, too, are stakeholders in this enterprise for world climate and native cultures; our culture, too, depends on its survival. It is thus ever more important, also in Munich, São Paulo, and Lisbon, to have a more precise idea about what is happening in the Amazon.

Amazonas and the “View of the Other” Peter Ruzicka, artistic director of the Munich Biennale

Since its founding more than two decades ago, the Munich Biennale has defined itself as an international festival. Internationality has never been a mere external criterion that is exhausted in the variety of lands from which the composers and librettists come. For us, internationality is, primarily, a question of intellectual substance and aesthetic standards. During the twenty-two years that the Biennale has been allowing new music theater to emerge and during which it has brought these works to the public arena with great continuity, worldwide networking has advanced rapidly. With that, cultural traditions have clashed at a speed and intensity that seem to annul their centuries-long growth. In today’s modern era, life proceeds at two speeds. The economy and culture move asynchronously. Cultures cannot be fused along the fast track. What is asked for is to make the “view of the other” (focus of the Munich Biennale 2010) one’s own; to try to understand what was hitherto foreign and unknown.

The musical theater project deals with the motto of the 12th Munich Biennale in various ways. Meeting in the Amazonas project, co-initiated by our festival and realized in May 2010, are the European appropriating view, the indigenous preserving view, and the inquisitive view into the future. The Amazon is in danger. The world knows it. But what is threatened? A river that reaches oceanic widths until finally dissipating in the sea forms the lifeline for a natural environment with an unparalleled wealth of flora and fauna; it is the aorta and central nervous system of a biological and cultural environment in which people found sense and purpose as part of nature. The paradise of natural, supposedly primeval wealth typically stirred in those Europeans exposed to it, two-sided feelings: admiration and greed, amazement and avarice. It would take quite some time until the huge, foreign, difficult to access area was “developed.” However, today, the consequences of white conquest are setting off alarms. The Amazon is a an extremely important area in terms of the ecological and cultural fate of the globe.

The musical theater project that the Munich Biennale is producing with international cooperation partners in May 2010, explores the aspects of “Amazonian pain” (Peter Sloterdijk) and an Amazonian future with all virtual and multimedial possibilities of modern music theater. Three relatively self-contained parts stand for the three types of views of Amazon history: 1. The view from afar: the view of the European, the “explorer” and conqueror, and at the same time, a retrospective look with full knowledge of the consquences. The libretto of this part assembles excerpts from Sir Walter Raleigh’s “exploration account” from 1596. Paradise, fear of nature, battle—and gold, first and foremost, gold, are the themes. Klaus Schedl brings the texts into a sound landscape that makes it possible to experience both the distance and topicality of the old account. 2. The view from up close: that of the indigenous people, the Yanomami, one of the large Amazonian peoples able to preserve their traditions; and of their representative, the shaman Davi Kopenawa Yanomami. The Yanomami myth of creation is told, thus making listening the central sense organ, in which the whites appear in the trinity as researchers, missionaries, and gold diggers as incarnations of Xavara, the spirit of disaster. The music, which contrary to the text continually gains in importance and integrates moments of indigenous tradition, is composed by the Brazilian Tato Taborda. 3. The view into the future: the third part comprises a multimedia project by the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) Karlsruhe conceived by Peter Weibel and composed by Ludger Brümmer. One evening—three fundamentally different parts—three dimensions of a theme on which global future will be, in part, decided.

“Amoahiki” – The song of the rain forest Laymert Garcia dos Santos, sociologist and philosopher, São Paulo The central question in the Amazon was, is and will remain the rain forest. So when it comes to conceiving an opera on the subject, the forest has got to be the central character. The rain forest is now in an extremely critical state, caught up in a process that seems to be driving it to ruination, in a more than risky game of roulette, whose planetary stakes are debated by scientists, but whose obviousness is now beyond doubt. Why roulette? Because in our collective imagination we act as though we were banking on the notion that the rain forest is inexhaustible, and that a solution to the problem of deforestation can still be found in the nick of time. But this is neither a zero-sum game nor a win-win situation, for in the long run there will be no winners at all. Nor is it a game of nature versus culture, outmoded versus modern, wild versus civilized. The rain forest is the protagonist in a lose-lose game that verges on the absurd. Hence the need for the public to play along by gradually “immersing themselves” in this borderline situation, by getting involved at every meaningful level of the rain forest. The spectator must become an interface upon which these levels reverberate as images, sounds and (sung or unsung) messages – in order to perceive what is being lost here, as well as the sheer pace of that loss.

On the first level, we need to approach this complex of water and jungle in its global dimension: the biggest river and rain forest in the world, still holding on in a positive interaction of forces, though no-one knows for how long. From the environmental level we can move to the archaeological and social level, for what we have before us is not only the product of nature, but also of socio-ecological circumstances, seeing as the Amazon has been inhabited for millennia. At this level we perceive the primeval forest as a medium in which human beings and animals evolve, giving rise to social diversity and the greatest bio-diversity on the planet. So the rain forest is at once a “climate machine”, a human society and a world of flora and fauna unto itself. And everything would be going fine in this tremendous powerhouse of life, radiating outwards in concentric circles into planetary dimensions, if it weren’t the victim of an extremely intensive process of deforestation, particularly over the past few decades, from the outside inwards.

For present-day science and technology, the forest is above all information. Not for nothing do biologists and ecologists compare it to a gigantic library that is being irretrievably lost even before the “books” of nature can be perused. We find ourselves in a paradoxical situation: the technical and scientific knowledge of the rain forest that has been amassed to date apparently doesn’t possess the leverage needed to stop the ruthless and predatory exploitation of the forest by the “civilized” world. On the other hand, the traditional know-how of the indigenous peoples has turned out to be well suited to ensuring, above and beyond the mere coexistence of nature and culture, the sustainability of their positive nexus to the rain forest. But it looks as though the “whites” are incapable of hearing what these peoples have to say. Basically, in an opera in which the rain forest plays the leading part, the actual tragedy consists in our inability to listen to those who could put their finger on the crux of the overall problem.

This is where the Yanomami come in. For at least two decades they have been tirelessly repeating that we mustn’t let the rain forest die. The white people won’t listen, don’t understand, refuse to heed the Yanomami’s clear-cut warning of imminent loss. To the Yanomami, nature is both urihia, or earth-forest, and urihinari, forest spirit, an image only the shamans can see. But songs, music, also come from the forest, from the trees called amoahiki. What is more, the knowledge the Yanomami and their shamans acquire has its acoustic basis in these songs. Hence, living nature is invaluable – both as earth-forest and as an audiovisual image, or as we might put it: as opera and opus by humans and non-humans alike. The protagonist of the opera is the Amazon rain forest. And its spokespeople are the Yanomami, who can help us find the forest spirit, which is precisely why they are the ones sounding the alarm about its impending doom. The threat of this irreparable loss signals the decline of the Yanomami, who are doing everything they can to save the forest. But what they are saying is that the destruction of the forest spells our own doom too.

The Yanomami and the Forest By Bruce Albert, Anthropologist, São Paulo The Yanomami are an indigenous society of hunters, gatherers and farmers in northern Amazonia. They form a large linguistic and cultural community inhabiting a roughly 192,000-sq-km region on either side of the border between Brazil and Venezuela. Their population is currently estimated at 33,000, 15,500 of whom live on the Brazilian side, dispersed among some 250 villages along the left-hand tributaries of the Rio Branco, in the western part of the state of Roraima, and the Rio Negro, in northern Amazonas state. The Yanomami area of Brazil was demarcated in 1991 and officially established in 1992, thereby guaranteeing this people the exclusive use of a contiguous area totalling approximately 96,650 square kilometres. During the gold rush in Roraima between 1987 and 1990, 10 to 15 per cent of the population was decimated by diseases and violence introduced by some 40,000 gold prospectors who overran their territory at the time. This tragedy stirred up in Davi Kopenawa Yanomami memories of traumatic childhood experiences when his tribe was wiped out by two epidemics (in 1959 and 1967) that broke out right after the Yanomami’s first contact with the Brazilian agency for the protection of Indians and with missionaries.

Davi Kopenawa began fighting for the demarcation of Yanomami land back in 1983. During the tragic incidents caused by the incursions of the gold prospectors in the late 1980s, he became the foremost spokesman for the Yanomami cause and one of the most well-known indigenous leaders, both in Brazil and in the world at large. He visited the US and several European countries, garnering a number of national and international awards for his commitment to the environment and his efficacious efforts to heighten public awareness of the lore and values of traditional peoples. Davi is now one of the most influential members of Watoriki, his village community in the Serra do Vento (Amazonas state) and a highly-esteemed shaman. He remains an untiring defender of the Yanomami’s land and rights as well as a steadfast guardian of his people’s traditions, particularly the brand of shamanism known as xapirimu, one of the bases of his cosmology.

The word urihia means both “Earth” and “forest” in the language of the Yanomami. Yanomae thëpë urihipë means “the people’s Earth-forest”. This is the land that Omama, the creator of the world and of Yanomami society, gave this people for them to settle and protect from one generation to the next, with the aid of xapiripë, spirit-images of primeval beings, which the shamans induce to dance in order to preserve order in the world and heal people. So to the Yanomami, the forest is by no means an impassive scenario, a mere object of economic exploitation, but a living being, animated by a complex dynamic of give-and-take between its various human and non-human, visible and invisible, inhabitants.

In the words of Davi Kopenawa Davi Kopenawa, shaman and spokesman of the Yanomami The forest does not belong to the Yanomami, they merely live in it: that is what the mendacious white men think. But they do not own the forest either, they only know how to destroy it. The true owners of the forest are the xapiripë spirits. They dwell in it, the mountains are their houses. The spirits of our animal ancestors and of the forest are the true owners of the woods. They play all over the mirrors of the forest. Were the whites to cut down the forest and destroy the mirrors of the spirits, the xapiripë would be enraged. If they had no place to play any more, they would flee far from the forest. Then the malicious being of the sun, Mothokari, would come down to Earth. And as soon as its feet were to touch the ground, the forest would be parched and scorched by its heat. It would dry up the rivers, too, with its tongue.

It must not be thought that the forest was simply placed on the ground and that it is dead. It is alive. That is why it causes the things to grow that we eat. Its earth is alive, and that is why we move and are alive as well. The forest is great, and that is why its breathing is also long; it is truly a supernatural being, it is the skin on the back of the sky, Hutukara. It should not be believed that the trees do not cry out in pain. When great trees are felled and they fall onto the back of the Hutukara-Earth, then it, too, groans in pain. If the forest is burnt down, it suffers the same way we humans feel pain. It cries “akaaai!”, but you do not hear its voice. This is why we want to defend the forest. Our children come into the world. We have to feed these children. Our forest is still alive because we are wise, because we do not fell many trees. If you cut down trees and set fire all over the place, the Earth dries up. If there are no more big trees that stand upright and store water, like the Brazil nut trees and sumaúmas, then the soil dries up. It is these big trees that soak up the rainwater and keep it inside the Earth. And if the Earth dries up, it dies. Then every last tree will die. The rivers and waters will return inside the soil, very far, to the deepest depths. Should this come to pass, then we, too, shall die. This is why we let the xapiripë spirits dance in order to defend the forest.

Translation: Bruce Albert, George Bernard Sperber, Joachim Bernauer