Hauch

Skin without body. Body without voice. Voice without breath. Breath without skin. Hauch is a music-performance piece exploring unconscious fears of public spaces. A series of clown sightings in unregulated liminal contexts become triggers for the transformation of the familiar into the foreboding. Funny, threatening, familiar and eerie, clowns appear as transmitters and receivers of social anxieties. Their painted faces obliterate identity. Reconfigured facial expressions subvert emotions amplifying inscrutability. Their voices modulate between exaggerated states of expression and detachment. Their deadpan hysteria embodies fears of the disappearance of all that is recognisable as familiar and comforting. Hauch is created by composer Juliana Hodkinson, artist Marsha Ginsberg and director Katharina Schmitt in urban spaces between Berlin and New York.

With
Melanie Schmidli and Dan Safer (performers)
The voices of the Neue Vocalsolisten (Johanna Vargas, Susanne Leitz-Lorey, Truike van der Poel, Martin Nagy, Guillermo Anzorena, Andreas Fischer)

Audio mix and mastering:
Peter Weinsheimer

Video editing:
Matěj Šenkýřík

Assistant director:
Glen Sheppard