In the 1950s Oliveros was part of a circle of iconoclastic composers, artists, poets gathered together in San Francisco. Oliveros has been as interested in finding new sounds as in finding new uses for old ones - her primary instrument is the accordion, an unexpected visitor perhaps to musical cutting edge, but one which she approaches in much the same way that a Zen musician might approach the Japanese shakuhachi. Pauline Oliveros’ life as a composer, performer and humanitarian is about opening her own and others’ sensibilities to the universe and facets of sounds. Since the 1960s she has influenced American music profoundly through her work with improvisation, meditation, electronic music, myth and ritual. Pauline Oliveros is the founder of “Deep Listening”, a way of listening in every possible way to everything possible to hear no matter what you are doing.

Six performers are pushing towards a paradigm shift in the future. They are following the score “To Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe in Recognition of their Desperation,“ which the composer Pauline Oliveros wrote in 1970 after reading the text “Scum Manifesto“ by Valerie Solanas (who is also known for shooting Andy Warhol). The work poses the question of the possibilities and limits of a politics of musical and filmic forms. Can sounds, rhythms and light produce queer relations? Can they become revolutionary?

18’, sound: Johanna Wienert & Rashad Becker