Inspired by diverse writings such as The Sea Around Us by the environmentalist Rachel Carson and Thinking Like An Iceberg by the philosopher Oliver Remaud, in which he paints a web of reciprocal connections between icebergs and human life, the SHAPE+ supported electroacoustic composer Félicia Atkinson premiered »Thinking Through the Iceberg,« an experimental oratorio for three characters, with the collaboration of the abstract guitarist Jules Reidy and sound artist crys cole.
Here, the scenography was the development of the music itself, unfurling an open reflection about what it takes to care about an environment and each other, and what also links solitude to togetherness, a poetic argument between written elements and improvised words, movements and sounds, a meditation on vulnerability. For Atkinson, human voices inhabit an ecology alongside and within many other things that don’t speak; her artistic work imagines possibilities of animating and entering into dialogue with such entities.
A five-part performance that drifted and melted slowly, »Thinking Through the Iceberg« combined grand piano, guitar, field recordings, voices, and whispers into an abstract minimal grunge, full of small details, metaphors, abstractions, revealing a complex and fragile interconnectedness even in places where there seems to be no life at all.
The project was produced by CTM and Shelter Press, and premiered during CTM Festival 2024 at Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz.