The Joyless Street

[silent film, Georg Wilhelm Pabst (1925)]
live-music: INS FLEISCH [2013-15] by IzP

duration: 150 '

(first performed: march 6th 2015, Cologne / Germany)


Mutating cell tissue that has become music, dissolving the boundaries between the organic and the synthetic, proliferates into something new. MEAT melts, BLOOD boils, SKIN drips ... the flow of the elegiac sound journey for electrified accordion, electric bass, live electronics, voice, feeds and keyboards is a constant pouring ... onto the flesh ... into the flesh ... under the flesh ... towards the next abyss, which the film describes in its realism of the early 1920s ... Stations on this journey are loving thanks to Richard Wright, Roger Waters Inhale Screams streaks, David Gilmour salutes, Pink Floyd bows - through you we have learned to unite materials and characters ... morphing orchestras ... the world moves ... factual ... real ...  THE JOYLESS STREET turns away from expressionist metaphors and towards the post-war reality marked by inflation. Georg Wilhelm Pabst's contribution - as a leading director of German film realism - takes the viewer to the poverty-stricken Melchiorgasse in Vienna in 1921. Two wealthy people pull all the strings: the butcher Josef Geiringer and Miss Greifer, who officially runs a fashion salon but is actually a brothel. She acquires her hookers by making women financially dependent and thus vulnerable to blackmail. This is just one level on which the disintegration of society takes place. Stock fraud enriches some and leaves others in poverty, murders occur, jealousy torments. Only one person has the prospect of a better life. 

INS FLEISCH means INTO THE FLESH