Vast White Stillness
A multi-spatial performance
by Claudia Molitor and Dan Ayling
“It must be immense, this silence, in which sounds and movement have room …
The distant sea … patiently letting the magnificent solitude work upon you …
an anonymous influence continuously and gently decisive …”
Rilke, Letter X, 26/12/1908
Vast White Stillness plays with the fleeting glance, the not-quite-heard, and the half-remembered just-out-of-reach, by combining composition with moving and still image, performance, live music and installation. At its core is the sense of Heimweh: a feeling trapped between happiness and sadness, giving rise to melancholy and a sense of loss.
…
just this vast white stillness
to which my stunned soul listens with breathless trepidation.
…
Rainer Maria Rilke
first performed at Spitalfields Festival 2014 and Brighton Festival 2015
The Taste of the Apple: composing as a process of listening, looking, dreaming and writing in Colloquium: Sound Art and Music, published by Zero Books discusses this work