A performance by Kinga Tóth and Ausgesuchtestenohren with students of the sound art workshop Sounds of Isolation

ORA ET SPIRA is a noise-prayer-performance by renowned Hungarian artist Kinga Tóth and Ausgesuchtestenohren (Karl Katschthaler) which premiered at MODEM, Centre for Modern and Contemporary Arts in Debrecen, Hungary on December 2, 2021. Our performance took place in one room of the exhibition Bible 21, showing contemporary artworks interpreting the gospels.

In our performance Kinga and I collaborated with students of the sound art workshop Sounds of Isolation I taught at the Institute for German Studies at the University of Debrecen, which was about our all experiences with the pandemic and the sounds related to them. In too sessions of this workshop Kinga also worked with the students

Kinga Tóth has been interested in the cult of Mary and the art of nuns for several years and uses prayers and songs in her performances. She is also working on this topic as a doctoral candidate at the University of Debrecen.

In the noise liturgy ORA ET SPIRA, Kinga, who has been interested in the cult of Mary and the art of nuns for several years and is exploring this topic in her PhD work at the University of Debrecen, performed Marian songs, prayers, poems, and sound poems with extended singing techniques and with the use of objects. The participating students used objects they had previously chosen during the workshop, for sound production. All acoustically produced sounds were further processed by me with live electronics.

The performance contained texts in three languages, Kinga performed her poems and prayers in German and Hungarian, I performed my pandemic related text about breathing in German and simultaneously one of the students, Ben Schutz, performed it in English.  

Here is my text in German and English:

There was also a live stream of the performance on Facebook.

Link to the video recording of the performance.