Maxime Denuc & Kris Verdonck

Elevations is an installation inspired by dub techno, a music genre that emerged in Berlin in the 1990s. Dub techno combines minimalist techno with Jamaican dub, from which it borrows the use of massive delay effects in particular.

With its hazy aesthetic, harmonious simplicity and subtle micro-variations in motifs, dub techno evokes the melancholy of the end of a party: the moment when bodies relax and night slowly gives way to day. Perhaps this is why researcher Alessio Kolioulis has described this musical style as a ‘hybrid futuristic nostalgia’.

Elevations stages this specific space-time condition through a formal and poetic translation: the musical material no longer arises from synthetic sounds, but from the pipes of a computer-controlled organ. This instrument – developed especially for this installation by Belgian organ builder Tony Decap – is designed as an eight-metre-long row. Each individual pipe can be controlled separately: the organ can produce both complex harmonic sound masses and fragile, breathing sounds. The effect of this long row of pipes and the tonal amplification of the instrument transport the audience into an immersive sound environment in which the acoustic and the electronic can no longer be distinguished from one another. 

The scenography consists of three light bulbs. The stage design relies on a mix of high and low tech, deep darkness and bright light, slowness and speed, height and depth. Instrument and scenography act independently of each other; humans are no longer involved.