Before the Wind | 2025

The project “Before The Wind” is both an exhibition and a multi-layered vocal performance with live video, song and choir, conceived for the specific architecture of the Diözesanmuseum Paderborn.

The exhibition in dialogue with the collection | 28.03.-21.09.2025
Drawings, videos, sound and video sculptures and installations: Claudia Brieske & Franziska Baumann
Curation: Dr. Christiane Ruhmann

The exhibition in the various museum interiors presents the New Opera context and audiovisual cosmos in which Franziska Baumann and Claudia Brieske have been working in their now almost 20-year collaboration. In addition to the documentation of previous projects, video and sound works created on Boa Vista - part of the Cape Verdean archipelago Ilhas de Barlavento (Islands above the Wind) - will be on display. They also connect with the stories, myths etc. behind specific figures and works in the museum's collection and bring them into the present in an experimental way. The exhibition also provides a special insight into Baumann-Brieske's complex working process, which culminates in an audiovisual voice production in the lower museum room at the end of the exhibition period.

The vocal performance in the audiovisual sound space | 3 performances in September 2025 for voice, live electronics, live video and choir

«Before the Wind» ça 60’
The piece is a reflection on the element of wind as a timeless and powerfully formative phenomenon. It becomes the central sonic-visual instrument of the production at the Diözesanmuseum Paderborn and combines the voice with gestural live electronics, live video, choir and spatial staging. Allegorical and metaphorical references enable the reference to biblical and archetypal themes of transience and the connection across the centuries.

The girls' voices of the Dome's girls' choir (Mädchenkantorei) enhance the female figures of the sirens and the wind. Baumann's alchemical mixture of archaic voice, minimalist and fully composed sound elements, text choreographies and musique concrète is based on the different, individual creative processes with which she guides the singers: Some are based on traditionally or graphically notated scores, others follow playful and aleatoric guidelines. Baumann composes vocal material in advance, which is worked out in preparatory rehearsals together with the choirmaster. In the rehearsals, additional dynamic and spatial playing instructions are tested in the museum and set in relation to the choir's rehearsed compositions as well as the live performance and Brieske's video images. The vocal performances are connected in a conceptual-compositional process with the amorphous and immersive video art of Claudia Brieske.

Concept, voice, composition for voice, choirs, live electronics: Franziska Baumann
Concept, composition, video recordings and editing, video production: Claudia Brieske
Choir: Mädchenkantorei des Doms in Paderborn under the direction of cathedral cantor Patrick Cellnik
Scenic direction: Angela Bürger
Costumes: Carlota Castella Gutiérrez
Sound and image direction: José del Avellanal