kassel jaeger/stephan mathieu/akira rabelais: zauberberg

"A few years ago, an idea germinated while reading The Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg) by Thomas Mann. An idea not driven by the narrativity of the book, but by the traces and the aura invoked in it. That was it: an audible aural journey through the memories of a place lost in the heights of the Swiss mountains. A century after the events depicted in the book, we went to where the story took place, trying to capture the remaining sounds that could have been heard at the time, and the ghosts who might have still wandered around. Zauberberg is based on these captures, on recordings of the music played by Hans Castorp (the novel's main character), on acoustic/electronic instrumentation and digital processing. The result is an evocation of time and duration, an exploration of what remains and what is lost, a meditation of the dissolution and persistence of the aura surrounding everything." --Kassel Jaeger, November 19, 2015