Aeolia – Karlheinz Essl And Ute Völker Take Us On A Trip @BMCA Storage
CLIENT: BMCA Storage
WORK: Writing an Article about the "AEOLIA" performance from Karlheinz Essl and Ute Völker at the BMCA Storage
After 20 years, two friends meet again. At BMCA Storage with their performance "Aeolia". Artists Ute Völker and Karlheinz Essl take us on a journey into a floating state, where the island of Aeolia itself opens up as a metaphor, the island of the wind god Aeolus. Ute Völker studied accordion and composition at the Cologne University of Music, in the Wuppertal department. She then studied musicology, German language and literature, and phonetics in Cologne, Vienna, and Paris. Völker specialises in free improvised music and creates sound architectures. She has given concerts in the USA, Canada, Africa, China, and South America. Ute Völker lives and works as a music teacher in Wuppertal.
Karlheinz Essl is a composer, electronic performer, media artist, and software designer. Essl studied composition with Friedrich Cerha and musicology in Vienna. In 1989, he received his doctorate with a thesis on Anton Webern. Essl was composer-in-residence at the Darmstadt Summer Courses, at IRCAM in Paris, and at the Salzburg Festival. From 2007 to 2025, he was a professor of electroacoustic composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna.
Sitting in front of us is Ute Völker with her accordion, next to her is Karlheinz Essl with his synthesiser and his specially developed vuvuzela installation. Essl uses a Talkbox for this. However, the tube is not placed in the mouth, but goes through the vuvuzela. The wah-wah pedal of the Talkbox is connectet to his synthesiser, which is connected to the vuvuzela. The vuvuzela allows the sound from the amplifier to be filtered differently, as the opening of the vuvuzela is very narrow. What is exciting here is the friction between the self-sounding interrupting aerophone instrument, the accordion, and the purely electronically produced sounds of the synthesiser. Electronic waves meet profoundly deep tones from the accordion.
The performance begins with a storm, a deep rumbling sound, and short melodies seem to be heard in all the confusion. Only to be blown away by the wild winds. The winds pile up, literally rushing over each other. The vuvuzela becomes alienated, emitting completely different sounds, no loud, high-pitched tones. It almost seems to whisper.
But the accordion is also alienated. It breaks free from the cocoon of folk music, the image of the traditional accordion. It transforms into a monumental, breathing apparatus. It almost seems to have a life of its own. Deep, vibrating sounds are produced, but also long, gentle and soft sounds that can be barely heard.
The clear sounds of the accordion mix with the unclear, electronically generated noises of the synthesiser and seem to be in dissonance, but then copy each other in other moments, creating an organic interweaving.
We dive into deep vibrations only to be carried back up again into light, playful and even hurricane-like winds. The performance repeatedly leaves room for pauses, allowing one to perceive dichotomy, disharmony, and symbiosis. Frames emerge. Each sound composition forms into a new structure, only to fade again and metamorphose into a new structure.
The deep blue of Ma Jia's work in the context of #occupyBMCA, starts to form individual atoms in the work that begin to move, a speckled chaos. The metal pipes seem to absorb the vibration, the patina moves. Michael Blank’s interwoven rubber plates appear to continue to grow with the sounds, to writhe and move with the tones, intertwining more and more. The ink on paper drawings behind the performers offer frames for the respective soundscapes.
This fluid collage of distortions, high, low, wild, and gentle winds does not take us to Aeolia, for that island is probably unreachable. But it does take us to a metaphysical space that dissolves matter, allowing us to briefly forget where up and down are. The apparent chaos becomes clearer as soon as one stops looking for patterns, for there are none. There is only the moment.
Text: Neve Regli
Fotos/Videos: Theo Wery
