Through the Thinking Iceberg

Inspired by diverse writings such as The Sea Around Us by the environmentalist Rachel Carson and Thinking Like An Iceberg by the philosopher Oliver Remaud, in which he paints a web of reciprocal connections between icebergs and human life, the SHAPE+ supported electroacoustic composer Félicia Atkinson will premiere Through the Thinking Iceberg, an experimental oratorio for three characters, with the collaboration of the abstract guitarist Jules Reidy and sound artist crys cole. Here, the scenography is the development of the music itself, unfurling an open reflection about what it takes to care about an environment and each other, and what also links solitude to togetherness, a poetic argument between written elements and improvised words, movements and sounds, a meditation on vulnerability. For Atkinson, human voices inhabit an ecology alongside and within many other things that don’t speak; her artistic work imagines possibilities of animating and entering into dialogue with such entities. A five-part performance that will drift and melt slowly, Through the Thinking Iceberg combines grand piano, guitar, field recordings, voices, and whispers into an abstract minimal grunge, full of small details, metaphors, abstractions, revealing a complex and fragile interconnectedness even in places where there seems to be no life at all.

Produced by CTM and Shelter Press.

Félicia Atkinson and the residency with crys cole and Jules Reidy is supported by SHAPE+, which is co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.