The Strike: Opera by Ulf Aminde actualizes the Symphony No. 45 by Joseph Haydn, also known as Farewell Symphony. The piece was written in 1772 for Haydn’s patron, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, while Haydn and the court orchestra were residing at the Prince’s summer palace. Due to additional performances, the musicians were asked to stay longer than expected, while their families were waiting for them at home. In order to manifest a disagreement with the extended working hours Haydn inscribed a form of a political protest directly on the music piece. During the symphony’s final Adagio the musicians left the stage as soon as their instrument’s part was finished in the score, so that at the end there were just two muted violins left and even the conductor had withdrawn.
Ulf Aminde recreates the last part of the Farewell Symphony looking at the possibilities of rebellious potential, protest movements, consciousness-raising, and performative strategies which reside directly within the art forms. By actualizing, restaging, and altering Haydn’s concept, Aminde reflects on the identity of the art community, the logic of its self-determination, and its capacities to create the significant disruption or a meaningful act of withdrawal. Strike: Opera also looks at the tradition of the art strikes as a form of protest produced within the artistic realm – from the Art Workers’ Coalition and Gustav Metzger to W.A.G.E – and reflects the tactics of the withdrawal.
The Leipzig edition of the Strike: Opera is an invitation to rehearse and perform the idea of an art strike, and at the same time it is a #testrun in the form of a call to the local and the international art community. Thus, cultural workers from diverse fields are invited to make statements on the fantasy of the strike and the grammar of distortion within their own cultural production. These contributions will be put together in the form of a single speech which will be presented in the afternoon until the first tones of the Adagio in the evening. The contributors’ voices create a libretto of diversity, on whose creation everybody including the visitors can participate.
What kind of music will we hear when no one is playing any longer?
›The Strike: Opera‹ belongs to Joanna Warsza’s “Performative Democracy”, a series of interventions in public space in Leipzig which is part of Responsive Subjects, a project in which the Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig (GfZK) collaborates with James Langdon (Birmingham), Joanna Warsza (Warsaw/Berlin) and Kateřina Šedá (Brno).
With kind support of the Friends of the Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig.
