18WEST – Songs for the downfall

Julia Mihály

Uraufführung

Musik Performance

The plans for runway 18 West at Frankfurt Airport led to a massive wave of protests from 1979 and one of the largest citizen movements in the Federal Republic of Germany. When a hut village built in 1980 on the site of today’s Runway West was cleared on 2 November 1981, protests escalated in several German cities. In the following years an increasingly calm resistance culture developed until on November 2, 1987 two police officers were shot by a demonstrator during a demonstration on the 6th anniversary of the evacuation of the hut village. Civil society protest is a form of democratic interaction between rulers and ruled, which has always been expressed in political songs. 18WEST – Songs für den Untergang” is intended to reflect on the field of tension between agitation and protest on a textual, musical and performative level and to test structures of belonging and solidarity.
We sit down in the epicentre of protest, we practice the revolution – the audience moves into the hut village.

Julia Mihály moves as a composer and singer at the interfaces of New Music, Performance Art and Electroacoustic Music. Following the tradition of technology-based performance, she uses live electronic sound synthesis processes as scenic means of staging. She deals with socio-political themes of contemporary everyday and media culture and aesthetically combines them with influences from pop culture, trash and anti-art.