In a breathtaking TIGHTROPE ACT, Pfeifer’s text "Zwischenfall" (Incident), in which time is told backwards, mirrors the literary realization of an old newspaper report - a real-life accident in 1949, when a famous tightrope walker and his daughter died after falling while attempting to cross Vienna's Danube Canal on a tightrope. By recounting the time of the feat both backward and forward, the event that ended fatally is re-realized in the retelling - tentatively - as a successful act. In this VORBRENNER experiment for Innsbruck’s experimental theater BRUX Milena Kipfmüller and Nika Pfeifer stage a risk-taking tightrope act connecting the past feat with a present one. The all-important moment, staged by us humans in the past as well as today as a breaking point, is now the livestream. The digital stream, which does not cross over the river but becomes a river itself, turns into a dialogue partner on stage, with whom Kipfmüller and Pfeifer pose the question of the significance of a moment from streamed events in physical stage danger and enact it acoustically-performatively as a real-time stage installation.
Das Luftding, 2006
Pneumatic installation, performance
Plastic, 15 m X 12 m X 4 m
Milena Kipfmüller / Nika Pfeifer
Drahtseilakt 2019
Live-Hörspiel für VORBRENNER, die experimentelle Schiende des BRUX, Innsbruck.
Photos: Milena Kipfmüller, Klaus Janek, Lukas Matthaei
The periscope used in times of war to foresee coming dangers "around the corner", Kipfmüller/Pfeifer oppose the text as an audio-visual layer and use the online platform Periscope as an image and audio pool that opposes the tightrope walkers. The text itself and the digital input become musical materials, sentences, words, syllables from which the event emerges are sampled live by us and composed into a symphony of meaningful anticipation - this in turn is streamed live in a feedback loop and transmitted to the radio as a soundtrack radio play.
