In a breathtaking balancing act in which time runs backward, this VORBRENNER experiment stages the prelude and turning point of an actual historical event from 1949: the tragic death of a famous tightrope walker and his daughter, who fell to their death while attempting to cross the Danube Canal in Vienna. By narrating the moment of the stunt both backward and forward, the event, which ended fatally, is reimagined – tentatively – as a successful act: The pivotal moment, then and now staged as an intentional breaking point, is now the live stream. The digital stream, which is not exaggerated but rather becomes the flow itself, takes on the role of interlocutor on stage. Through this, the events that unfold in real-time become an inquiry into the significance of a single moment, with the questions posed in the physical danger of the performance. This is then staged acoustically and performatively as a real-time stage installation.
Milena Kipfmüller and Nika Pfeifer perform a daring tightrope act that connects the past performance with the present. The periscope, once used during wartime to anticipate the dangers “lurking around the corner,” is used by the duo as an audio-visual layer to counter the text. They use the Periscope platform as a pool of images and sounds to counter the tightrope walkers. The text itself and the digital input become raw material for the musical composition—sentences, words, syllables—that are live-sampled by the performers and composed into a symphony of meaningful anticipation. This is then streamed live in a feedback loop and broadcast as a soundtrack radio play.
