Iris ter Schiphorst
Le tremblement permanent du moi-fantôme...(2020)
for the WP, Paris 2020, on the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth
'Le Tremblement permanent du moi- fantôme...pour Adrian Piper', a composition commissioned by the outstanding French ensemble Musicatreize for Beethoven Year 2020 under the motto '12 Letters to Elise', raises the question of who we are today, 250 years after the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven, and what remains of his ideals, his belief in enlightenment, equality, justice and freedom.
The title of my work already indirectly refers to the radical redefinition of human beings in the 21st century. In neuroscience, for example, there is no longer any talk of the 'I' of human beings, but only of an 'I illusion'. And even the 'mind', the so-called 'consciousness' of human beings, is no longer located in the immaterial or transcendent, but simply in the chemistry and physics of the brain.
What does this mean for music, for the art of today? How do composers and artists deal with this knowledge?
I myself decided to include some of these questions in my text for the above-mentioned occasion.
The libretto begins with a collection of short, dramatic images that are hurled into the room like fragments of perception from a 'world out of joint', then goes on to quote leading neuroscientists and finally ends – in keeping with the spirit of the commission – abruptly with a letter, in this case to the American conceptual artist and philosopher Adrian Piper, who, like Beethoven in his day, still feels committed to Kant's ideals and a rigorous Enlightenment. In her award-winning work "The Probable Trust Registry: The Rules of the Game #1–3", which won the Golden Lion at the 2015 Venice Biennale, she has the recipients sign a contract with themselves that obliges them to act in accordance with ethical and moral principles throughout their lives.
This letter to Adrian Piper – actually more of a cry for help to my fellow artist! – marks a drastic break in the composition. In it, I reveal my struggle as a composer to find an answer to the question of what the task of music, of art, is today. In doing so, I address Adrian Piper, who has deeply impressed me with her unambiguous stance on this question, as a kind of moral authority (since God, for example, has long since become obsolete...). For as a composer, I am torn on this question:
What, for example, about art that not only follows Kant's view, i.e. that 'at first glance' addresses the recipient's 'affective involvement' rather than their reason/intellect? That relies on 'contagion', on 'infection'? Such a view would be championed by Antonin Artaud, Gilles Deleuze, and Erika Fischer-Lichte, among others, who share the belief that aesthetic contagion has the potential to awaken the foreign hidden within the 'self' and thus ultimately make it more open to 'the other'. So are both approaches valid? Or do we perhaps need a completely different approach today?
Ultimately, these questions can only be decided by the recipients.