The lights go out. What a blessing. If only because radio plays in particular have been dragging a lot of the same thing into the limelight for quite some time: either you hear the novel adaptation of either a bestseller or a classic, or you hear a self-referential discourse on identity. Sometimes both come together. Now and then it’s exciting, stimulating, irritating in a positive way. But more often: to be expected, mutilated (in the case of the literary adaptations) and shallow (in the case of the self-discovery pieces).
In the radio play Silence Deluxe by the author and musician duo wittmann/zeitblom, the figures groping in the dark deal with this artistic self-castration of the radio play: “I think you always have to stay complicated,” demands one voice. A little later, however, another asks, referring to her own piece: “Isn’t that too complex?” And thus anticipates what is obviously recommended to creative people everywhere by the numbers people, at least according to the listening impression: better not offend, better be even more accommodating than you already are.
Can we imagine a better world than the one we live in?
Wittmann and Zeitblom, on the other hand, take the medium and the audience seriously. They tell in their play Silence Deluxe, which they call a radio opera, a story that can only be told in a radio play. Where there is no light and none is needed. Where most is imagination and little fleshed out. Where there is only sound and voice. And no art-with-attitude-but-without-art-art.
The sun disappears. For longer time. With this disruption begins Silence Deluxe. The sky turns indigo blue, the grass shimmers grey. “Everything seems to be reminiscent of a future century.” Someone sees rails and claims they lead to train stations. How does he know that, he is asked. Why else should the rails have been laid, someone replies.
“The traditional is constantly being preached,” it is said later, when it is no longer about rails. But about the big picture. Does it need a revolution so that what is expected and planned does not always happen? Food, sleep, mobility, sexuality, order, leisure time, self-esteem, freedom – shouldn’t all of this be taken away from speculators and investors so that the world becomes a better place? Because it got so bad: “We buried the utopia because we can’t imagine a better world than the one we live in.”
Shouldn’t we collectively replace the sun with a black square, as the painter Kasimir Malevich did a hundred years ago? To unleash our fantasies. Malevich is an inspiration for Silence Deluxeespecially the futuristic opera victory over the sun, which he realized in 1913 together with Alexei Kruchenykh, Velimir Khlebnikov and Mikhail Matjuschin. The radio opera Silence Deluxe defies expectations in that musically it is neither opulent nor orchestral. wittmann/zeitblom composes a fine electronic sound without any noteworthy melody. The radio play is the start of a journey without a specific goal, but with immense challenges: “We begin the fight against space. We sink the mountains.”
Silence DeluxeDLF, April 15, 2023, 8:05 p.m.