A Performance by Sonia Wieder-Atherton
Intertwined with Chantal Akerman's Blow Up My Town (1968)
"This is a dialogue that I imagined with Chantal. Chantal in Blow Up My Town. I wanted to play along with her, her every move, her silences, at once burlesque and deadly serious dancing, her anxiety, humming little tunes. Tracking her, surprising her, surprising myself at each step. It would begin with solo cello. Bartók. Two movements from his last work, composed in 1944. His sonata for solo violin, transcribed here for cello. A violent energy. A sequence of colors, dances, virtuosity, folk tunes, deep songs. Then, after the Melodia movement, you hear a child's voice singing softly, then louder and louder. This is Chantal’s voice, as she races up the stairs, singing. It’s Blow Up My Town. After the explosion, the film ends, the child’s voice returns with the little tune we heard at the start and I play a prayer. Then Chantal’s book, A Family in Brussels, slipped its way gently between the notes and the images. It’s an installation. In Chantal’s world. Inspired deeply from what happened in our two apartments, one above the other, rue Henri Chevreau, in Paris, when I played and Chantal wrote. The images mingled with the words, and the words with the notes."
— Sonia Wieder-Atherton
Conception: Sonia Wieder-Atherton, in collaboration with Renaud Bouchard-Gonzalez | Cello: Sonia Wieder-Atherton | Music: Song (Jewish Traditional), Sonata, Presto / Melodia by Béla Bartók, Leoš Janáček, Moravian Poem, With You by Sonia Wieder-Atherton, New York Quatuor by Sonia Wieder-Atherton, Traditional Jewish Prayer, Cadenza, excerpt from La Symphonie concertante Op.125 by Sergueï Prokofiev. | Film: Blow Up My Town by Chantal Akerman, 1968 | Text: A Family in Brussels by Chantal Akerman, 1998 | Chantal? was created at FGO-Barbara in Paris in April 2018 and produced by Waltersounds. | With the support of Chantal Akerman Foundation.
