second of two installations i’ve really enjoyed recently, re-rite is a multitrack recording of the philharmonia orchestra performing stravinsky’s the rite of spring, played out across 25 screens and the three floors and many rooms of the wonderfully dilapidated bargehouse. i’d have gone to see such a mediated-live-performance-with-lots-of-screens type thing anyway, and doubly so as the philharmonia partnered with friends yeast to make this (props, pulled it off to a really high standard/) but it really got under my skin: the experience was unique, beyond the goal of somehow giving the experience of being inside an orchestra on stage.
easy to explain would be the thrill of hearing a percussion crash somewhere else in the building come reverberating through while you were isolated with an entirely more delicate section of the orchestra. harder to convey would be as you explored the different rooms there was almost a touch of a haunted house rather than the known jigsaw you’d see on stage. at the heart of it is something that could only be delivered through such an installation, that wasn’t about the orchestral unit you see on stage, but was still very much about the orchestra, the music, the players. which is also why there is no photo from the installation above, just a production still i cullled from the website.