Maren Strack and I first met at Schloss Solitude, both of us being grant recipients there for the
period of 2000-2001. I was deeply impressed with her original, forceful, unostentatious and yet very
creative Performances, so I came up with the idea of doing something together almost immediately.
Maren is also a dancer , so many of her pieces, such as Ytong, ICE Lisa Meitner, Latex
(which 'subcutánea' is based on), are all very rhythmical, therefore, it was not difficult
for me to visualize the piece I wanted to do.
I took her performance Latex, which, I think, doesn't have a dramatic 'development' and
tried to give it a new structure to, somehow, make it narrate an abstract story (without a plot).
I worked with the dress noises; filtering, cutting, looping and editing them; also taking very short
passages from a couple of instrumental pieces of mine and working with them in the same way;
as well as using 'subliminal' poems (because they are deliberately almost inaudible) by
Beatrix Haustein and Karen Volkman (both of them also Solitude fellows), read by
Christiane Schmeling (german texts) and Annabel Howland (english one).
All these elements constitute what became the music of the piece.
The film on the web site is a documentation of it, since the first part (until Maren rises)
is performed originally under dim lights, almost in complete darkness; the music being able
to create a special mood that gets lost in the film.
'subcutánea' was a commission of the Akademie Schloss Solitude and the SWR
(Southwest German Radio) for the Éclat Festival in Stuttgart in 2002.
Maren Strack, performance
Christiane Schmeling & Annabel Howland, voices
Texts: Karen Volkman ('Reflections'),
Beatrix Haustein ('engelsturz', 'lass mich dein nachtfalter sein', 'nebenan')
Héctor Moro, composition and sound design
© héctor moro
