The point of departure for Michaele Melián’s sound work Andante Calmo is an aria from Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème. Premiered in 1896, the opera revolves around the lives of young Parisian Bohemians. The plot culminates in a disaster – not brought about by interpersonal or national political conflicts, however, but from within: the protagonist Mimì suffers from tuberculosis and dies. In the nineteenth century, tuberculosis was associated with an excessive sensitivity to which artists and above all people in love were thought to be susceptible. Melián has now endeavoured to bring the material up to date by composing a new soundtrack based on the part of Mimì. Using various contemporary sounds as well as a shellac recording of 1919, she has produced a collage of a fragile and melancholy quality. A chorus of three young singers plays the part of Mimì, whose image as a woman oscillates between weakness and libido. The listening space is a fundamental component in the œuvre of Michaela Melián who, in addition to her work in the area of the visual arts, is also a musician and founding member of the band F.S.K. Like colours and forms, sounds can influence the impact of a place in various ways. Executed especially for the exhibition, Melián’s sound work Andante Calmo is like an immaterial sculpture that meanders in the aether over the city and materializes in various formats: her version of the aria can be accessed by way of a QR code and also forms the core of her sound installation at the Kunsthaus. Here the piece not only etches itself into the location materially, but virtually interweaves with the other works in the exhibition. A small stage with headphones invites the visitors to try out a new position in the room, a position which – defined by the isolated, intense experience of music and the physical elevation of the platform – possesses elements of distance as well as theatrical display.

Within the framework of the symposium THERAPEUTIC ALLIANCES, Andante Calmo was presented as a performance at Kampnagel Hamburg, Nov 2, 2014

Andante Calmo is produced in cooperation of the project ILLNESS AS METAPHOR: MADNESS IN THE GARDEN OF THE SPECIES (Hamburg, 2014,) with the Ursula Blickle Foundation, where a different version of the installation was presented at the exhibition A HOUSE OF PASSIVE NOISE in Nov 2014.
www.kamhh.de