The Philharmonie Project
(Bruckner: Symphony No. 5, movements 1 & 4)

Installation view, Barbara & Art Culver Center for the Arts at UCR ARTS, Riverside, USA, 2021. Photo: Jason Gowans

Installation view, Barbara & Art Culver Center for the Arts at UCR ARTS, Riverside, USA, 2021. Photo: Jason Gowans

Single-channel video installation with sound: freestanding screen construction, custom seating, and speakers | 2011 | 50:00

Filmed during a performance of Bruckner’s 5th Symphony by the Berliner Philharmoniker Orchestra, The Philharmonie Project (Bruckner: Symphony No. 5, movements 1 & 4), reconfigures the protocols of backstage, performance, spectacle, and audience. Instead of showing the orchestra, the work features the video production team of the Philharmoniker’s Digital Concert Hall as they film the concert for live broadcast using six cameras controlled remotely from a studio housed above the hall. Each technician performs a specific role, calling out numbers corresponding to the bars of music, the cameras, and the cameras’ positions, as they translate the musical score into a choreography. Bruckner’s music acts as both an extension of the technicians’ performance and its dramatic soundtrack, heightening the tension conveyed by the action.

Juxtaposing four continuous, unedited shots, the video does not grant us access to the performance on stage. We see only its mediation laid bare. Two fixed cameras present close-ups of key team members: the “conductor” reading and counting out the score to cue the changes of shot, and the camera operator, who controls all the cameras remotely on a console. Two more cameras wander around the studio, revealing the video operator, who switches live camera feeds, and the camera assistant calling upcoming camera positions to the camera operator. Like the shots they orchestrate, the team move together, performing almost as a single composite entity, like the orchestra itself.

  • Public Collection: National Gallery of Canada

Credits

  • Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major:
    Performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker, conducted by Bernard Haitink, on March 12, 2011. 

  • Appearing:
    Daniel Finkernagel & Alexander Lück (Directors), Volker Striemer (Camera Operator), Uli Peschke (Vision Mixer)

  • Cinematographer:
    Daniel Sippel

  • Camera:
    Lynne Marsh

  • Sound Recording and Mix:
    Johannes Krämer

  • Gaffer:
    Lars Oelmann

  • Editing:
    Mathieu-Bouchard-Malo

  • Color Grading:
    Christoph Manz

  • Production Support:
    Berliner Philharmoniker Digital Concert Hall Team

  • Funding:
    The Bambi Foundation, Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and University of Hertfordshire

Excerpt: 5:04 min

Related Texts

  • Extra Visible Dimension: Lynne Marsh's The Philharmonie Project (Nielsen: Symphony No. 5)

    Author: Rosemary Heather

    PROGRAM | initiative for art + architecture collaborations, 2012

    PDF

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