Frankfurt Lab

The performance approaches the idea of a portal not as a fixed opening between two places, but as something that might move, shift and transform along with those who pass through it.

The work takes its point of departure from the physical idea of moving portals — speculative spaces in which the relation between here and there, becomes unstable. This notion opens onto another kind of passage: the movement between states of existence, perception and consciousness.

Two theremins form the sonic architecture of the performance. Their electromagnetic fields might respond to the movement of performers, producing sound without physical contact. The invisible space between body and instrument becomes active: distance turns into gesture, gesture into frequency, and frequency into a condition that is continuously changing.

Alongside the theremins, a sculptor transforms this unstable space through material intervention. The exact relation between the bodies, the instruments and the sculptural elements remains open and can develop through the process of making the work.

The performance also draws loosely on the Bardo Thödol, the Tibetan text describing intermediate states encountered between death and rebirth. The Bardo as a space of transition: a state in which an established reality has disappeared, while what comes next has not yet taken form.

With the Portals uncertainty, transformation and suspension rule. Sound, movement and matter continually negotiate where one state ends and another begins.

The work remains deliberately open. The performers may inhabit, construct, disturb or dissolve the portal; the instruments may function as thresholds, extensions of the body or autonomous presences. Through this shifting reality, intermediate state — physically, acoustically, spiritually and materially is to be investigated.