Commission to Marcus Schmickler

In 2025, the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart is celebrating a double anniversary: 100 years of the collection and 20 years of the Kunstmuseum am Schlossplatz. To mark the occasion, the museum’s collection will be comprehensively re-presented throughout the building. The exhibition will be accompanied by a broad, interdisciplinary programme of film, literature and, in particular, music.

Particularly noteworthy is the multi-part music and multimedia project The Great Wayfinders (Höhlenmusik I-IV), which is being developed by Marcus Schmickler (composition, libretto) together with Tim Berresheim (dramaturgy, stage design). The Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation is making the commission to Marcus Schmickler possible.

The piece will be premiered as a concert (Stuttgart 2025) as well as installed in a museum context via an AV installation (Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, London and others in 2024). According to Schmickler, we are currently at the beginning of a new era, that of the computer age, and perhaps in 300 years’ time we will be talking about today as the “digital Stone Age”. In retrospect, the beginnings of this new era may seem awkward, even archaic. Based on these considerations, the composition takes a look back from the future to our present, which Schmickler understands as a resonance chamber of digital palaeontology.

The anchor for the multi-part composition is the figure of the wayfinder, who appears in Polynesian culture, but also in German fairy tales such as Hansel and Gretel. While the play’s protagonists playfully go through various stages of trial and error, they learn a new language – that of digitality. The libretto draws on images from Engelbert Humperdinck’s opera Hansel and Gretel. With the help of “breadcrumbs”, the children explore the forest of unknown digital artefacts. They are accompanied by two loving parental figures who speak a language unknown to them.

The field of palaeo-organology, in which Schmickler operates, deals with research into musical instruments and the origin of sound. According to this, the essence of music lies in nature itself and is based on the imitation of its sounds. The instruments are made of natural materials such as bones, seeds, shells and stones. Schmickler sees in these archaic objects an unexpectedly precise knowledge of transmediality. Schmickler’s unusual view from the future to our present, the early days of the computer, is based on these reflections on sound sources and the nature of music. Through the sounds of bees and shells, the composition connects earth and sea with algorithms, opaque machines and computers. Schmickler’s research into the music of digital nature and ancient soundscapes focuses on rediscovering the psychoacoustic powers of archetypal sounds, thereby pursuing a new approach to experimental archaeology and musicology.

Further information:
kunstmuseum-stuttgart.de

Dates

2025
Kunstmuseum Stuttgart