3D scans from the performance
das irdische leben | the earthly life (decomposition series)
engraved aluminum, burial, and reading
A collective burial of a sheet of aluminum engraved with two fragments of notation from Gustav Mahler’s Das irdische Leben (The Earthly Life), a setting of a German folk poem from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. The quotations reference the symbolism of death in Mahler's composition. The burial occurred in an undisclosed location in Germany’s Black Forest and was accompanied by a reading performance. It is part of a series of buried scores referring antithetically to the etymology of composition: putting together. As the work is still buried and decomposing at an extremely slow rate, it now functions as a sort of inaudible and invisible “permanent” work of sound/land art.
3D scans from the performance
score in-situ during burial