This event is included in the Friends of Reethaus annual pass.
This Berlin Art Week, Reethaus presents a special program marking the LP release of The Ear is the Eye of the Soul, the original music composed for the Holy See Pavilion at the 61st Biennale di Venezia, originally commissioned by the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education and curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Ben Vickers, with artistic direction by Soundwalk Collective.
Installed in the Giardino Mistico earlier this year, the work unfolds as a sonic prayer inspired by the compositions and figure of Hildegard of Bingen, a visionary abbess, poet, healer and composer in whose mind cosmology, music and medicine formed one continuous mode of perceiving creation.
A stunning diversity of contemporary artists were invited to respond to Hildegard’s scores from almost a millennium ago, working with a single harmonic intent. The Ear is the Eye of the Soul includes works by Bhanu Kapil, Brian Eno, Carminho, Caterina Barbieri, Devonté Hynes, FKA twigs, Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst, Jim Jarmusch, Kali Malone, Kazu Makino, Laraaji, Meredith Monk, Moor Mother, Otobong Nkanga, Patti Smith, Raúl Zurita, Soundwalk Collective, Suzanne Ciani, Terry Riley and the Benedictine Nuns of the Abbey of St. Hildegard Eibingen.
This collective work echoes the spirit in which Hildegard lived, since in her time the music was always performed in unison, the sisters raising their voices together to ascend to the divine, allowing visions to permeate their experience. For Hildegard, sound was a way of knowing. In The Ear is the Eye of the Soul, listening becomes the primary act, and collective listening an opportunity to share inner experience.
The ambulatory journey of the Giardino Mistico is translated into a synchronous one at Reethaus, where simultaneous experience opens a space of communion. Celebrating the release of the LP — a sonic catalogue printed at The Vinyl Factory, designed by Irma Boom’s studio, co-produced with Analogue Foundation and distributed by Bella Union and HENI — the listening sessions at Reethaus introduce the music to an audience already attuned to the practice of deep collective listening.
Image credit: Coat of Arms of the Holy See
