Dialogue Concert Series #3

Transformation

Chamberworks is set of 28 drawings created by Daniel Libeskind during the years in which he served as the head of the Architecture Department at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan in the early 1980s. The drawings explore the relationship between music and architecture, both architectonically and graphically. Chamberworks are central to the oeuvre of Daniel Libeskind, as well as to the music that will be played during the Dialogue Concert #3: Transformation, and will  be performed in combination with Christopher Dell’s concept of Formblocks.

Christopher Dell conceives these as "a strategic performative approach to work constructively, and non-arbitrarily with indeterminacy. In this sense Formblocks serve as a lens through which the Chamberworks are musically read as scores."

"In the same manner that music can be related to science in the form of visualisation, it can also be related to architecture. Not only do music and architectural notation – through variation, modulation and invention - elegantly move across forms, they also have the capacity to let transformation take place across categories. For instance both, a translation of a geometric formula into the material state of an architectural drawing or model, or a making over of a musical concept into the performance by players, let a mental idea become sensual shape. This does not mean, that the origin of the shape is the idea. Quite on the contrary, the geometrical as well as the musical concept are grounded in a praxis. In other words, they have – and historically have had – to be activated in order to take place. One can claim that in a strange way the geometrical as well as the musical concept are ideal entities, that are also historical. While containing an ideal core, they accrete sedimentations in their transmission, their delivery to the present and future, which transforms their shape."

The Chamberworks sketches are graciously made availbable by the Tchoban Foundation Museum for Architectural Drawing, and are integral for the performance of the Dialogue Concert.

Talk about his 'Chamberworks'
Daniel Libeskind New York

Concert
Elisabeth Coudoux Cello, Cologne
Christopher Dell Vibraphone, Berlin
Pascal Klewer Trumpet, Cologne
Christian Lillinger Drums, Berlin

Conversation
Daniel Libeskind, Christopher Dell and audience

Dialogue Concerts
On the occasion of Aedes Architecture Forum’s 40th anniversary, the series Dialogue Concerts. Conceptual Research on Architecture and Music presents a pluralistic media format, re-envisioning urban research. Architectural practice will enter into a dialogue with musical praxis.

Designed as a montage of lectures, concerts and discussions Dialogue Concerts is a series of events that will examine the interplay of urban space and communal life. Set up as an experimental interdisciplinary format, the Dialogue Concerts series is comprised of 6 events from December 2019 through December 2020. In this context,
 the city is not defined as a fixed object, but as a dynamic and collective constellation that is performatively produced.

Curated by the vibraphonist, composer and urban theoretician Christopher Dell, Dialogue Concerts is presented as artistic statement and critical dispositif. International architects and musicians are invited to address aspects of procedural strategies across disciplines in a series of six Dialogue Concerts. Taking questions of mediality, corporality, interaction, materiality, structure and transformation as starting points, Dialogue Concerts creates a discursive space seeking to illustrate the societal relevance of both disciplines in a new way.

Dialogue Concerts is organized by Christopher Dell in cooperation with the Aedes Architecture Forum, funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe and the Musikfonds e.V. with project funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.