Intergalactic Concert Theatre: Rockets, Synths & Gods, Trafó Budapest, 4 & 5 October

contemporary

  • 5 Oct 2024 8:00 PM
  • Trafó Budapest
Intergalactic Concert Theatre: Rockets, Synths & Gods, Trafó Budapest, 4 & 5 October
Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin, the first man to go to outer space, is believed to have said that he saw no god up there. But then why do we still long for space - a place we know for sure there is nothing there?

A journey into our collective unconscious based on visual and musical dramaturgy. With the help of six singers and two actors, we will recall what the first human space voyage and the invention of the analogue synthesizer meant to humanity - and even try to recreate the experience through a community ritual.

“On the 12th of April, in the morning, I was sitting on a little stool and heating the oven. Suddenly I hear the call sign on the radio: Man is in space! But we were always told that God is in the heavens, so how can a man fly there and not bump into Elijah the Prophet or one of God’s angels?” (Letter from E. Danilova, a 73 year old woman from the Kuibyshev region, 1961)

In the 1960s and '70s, mankind conquered not only outer space, but also a new world of sound with the advent of electronic music and the synthesizer. These two stories of conquest are linked in sound and image: in art, the incredibly expensive and highly symbolic act of space travel is accompanied by oscillators, in science fiction, the controls of spaceships resemble analogue synthesizers.

But which was a more meaningful endeavour, and which story's heroes are more suited to today's man in search of the right life strategy in a climate crisis? Has the composer Wendy Carlos found in music the god that Yuri Gagarin failed to find in space?

Can we become a god through science or art? Will technological progress save humanity, as Elon Musk believes, or will it lead to our ultimate destruction?
Place: Trafó Budapest
Address: 1094 Budapest, Liliom utca 41.
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