Three Mile Island
Thu, March 29, 2012 9 pm CEST, Concert
With his new project »Three Mile Island«, Andrea Molino undertakes to remind us of an event that happened 30 years ago and is largely forgotten: the nuclear accident that took place in Three Mile Island on the morning of the March 28th, 1979. One of the reactors in the nuclear power plant began to heat up because of a faulty cooling system − a tragedy that has been kept out of the limelight, a conspiracy of silence.

The research of the Austrian meteorologist Ignaz Vergeiner leaves no doubt: In the first 24 crucial hours the radioactive cloud traveled much further than the authorities admitted. The damage to people, objects and the environment was serious and irreversible. Unfortunately Vergeiner's premature death put a halt to his efforts. But he had revealed the details in a 7 hour filmed interview with his friend, the German journalist Karl Hoffmann.

The multimedia staged concert with Molino's music is thus based on written and videorecorded contributions by Ignaz Vergeiner, collected by Karl Hoffmann. Guido Barbieri is responsible for the texts and dramaturgy. An interactive intermedial installation − the "Cloud" − designed by a creative team of the ZKM | Karlsruhe and of the Department of Art & Media of the Zurich University of the Arts, will react in real time with the live performers and provide documentary style, factual information: the voice and face of Vergeiner, the testimonies of the survivors and the interviews with family members of the nuclear accident victims filmed on location. These audiovisual materials are continuously counterpointed by the "Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart"; the narration is reinforced and underlined by an extremely variated vocal texture. The instrumental part, performed by the "Klangforum Wien", is also organically involved in this dialogue and with the help of amplified percussions, wind and string instruments adds meaning, lightness and expression to the element 'air'.

Andrea Molino − composition, art direction

Guido Barbieri − texts and dramaturgy
in collaboration with Andrea Molino

Karl Hoffmann − audio visual documentation

Bernd Lintermann, ZKM − video, Holger Stenschke, ZKM − audio visual design, Anna Falkenstern, ZKM − video editing, Manuel Weber, ZKM − stage and light

Zürcher Hochschule der Künste − Media Arts − The Cloud − interactive video installation

Klangforum Wien
Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart − contributers
ZKM | Institut für Musik und Akustik − production

The Cultural Turn and its Practise in the Humanities
The climate and protection of the environment are themes that also impact upon art and which can no longer be thought of in separation; noteworthy representatives from research and politics will be discussing these themes prior to the opera evening on the panel "The Cultural Turn and its Practice in the Humanities". The extent to which an augmentation of the three-pillar model of sustainable development − until now constituting economic, ecologic and social sustainability − surrounding cultural perspectives is meaningful forms the thematic subject in the panel discussion. The model was co-developed at the Research Center in Karlsruhe, in 1998.


A coproduction of ZKM | Karlsruhe, Accademia Filarmonica and Istituzione Universitaria di Concerti in Rom, in cooperation with Zürcher Hochschule der Künste
Organization / Institution
ZKM
Partners
Accademia Filarmonica und Istituzione Universitaria di Concerti in Rom ; Zürcher Hochschule der Künste