Happiness Machine. 20 Female Artists hold a European Discussion on the Future of the World

For its project Happiness Machine. 20 Female Artists hold a European Discussion on the Future of the World Klangforum Wien, in cooperation with the international animation film festival tricky women, will be commissioning ten female composers and ten film artists to sound out and explore, in close cooperation, new opportunities for interplays between music and film. The 20 artists will explore the theme of Christian Felber’s Economy for the Common Good. This Austrian writer’s concept for redesigning the European economy oriented to the common good was recognized on September 17, 2015 with a resolution of the EU Social and Economic Committee as "a sustainable economic model for social cohesion” and was expressly recommended as a guideline for legislation in the EU and its member states.

The project’s formal artistic approach is aimed at the targeted collaboration of these two often only quite randomly related art forms. The usual arrangement is changed with the film running at the top and the music playing at the bottom; both start up at the same time and also end at the same time; the music essentially assumes an illustrating and accompanying role that is also perceived in the concert context by the large audience in a scarcely obvious way and certainly not as an independent statement. Consequently, the project is embarking on new paths that give the music its own weight and space both in the characteristic style of the individual films and in the different staged configurations of the overall project: interruptions in the film, interventions by the musicians, dialog action between the film plot and composition and the like.

With the political and social approach of its project the Klangforum pursues a permanent concept: the answer to the misuse of music in the political context is not to withdraw from social sharing into an ivory tower removed from everyday life but, instead, to present a pronounced line-up of considerable contributions which music can offer: style, collection, careful listening and focus. The EvS Music Foundation is funding the composition commissions issued to Iris ter Schiphorst, Malin Bång, Eva Reiter, Carola Bauckholt and Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri.


July 14, 2018
Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik Darmstadt/International Summer Courses for New Music Darmstadt

September 22, 2018
BOZAR Brussels

February 1, 2019
Theaterhaus Stuttgart, ECLAT Festival Neue Musik Stuttgart

March 2019
Wiener Konzerthaus
Tricky Women Festival, Vienna

March 22, 2019
Haus der Kulturen der Welt, MaerzMusik, Berlin


Further Information:
www.klangforum.at