Opera Lab Berlin | Björnsson & Marx ¡SILENCIO, POR FAVOR!

The idea of absolute silence is both gratifying and threatening.

Silence can be wellness or torture, a coveted resource or an absolute  nightmare. But above all, it is an impossibility: “Try as we may to  make a silence, we cannot”, John Cage observed after visiting an  anechoic chamber and encountering not silence but the buzzing of his  nervous system and the throbbing of his blood.

¡SILENCIO, POR FAVOR! initiates a search for perfect  silence, knowing full well that it does not exist. Therefore, when the  ensemble searches for silence, it is actually searching for sounds:  sounds of everyday life, sounds of coincidence, unintended sounds and  inaudible sounds that buzz through the space in the form of  imperceptible frequencies. Using selected works by John Cage and Cathy  van Eck and with the help of the antennae of sound artist Marta  Zapparoli, Björnsson | Marx and Opera Lab create a dense mesh of music,  sounds and texts, opening up a space for reflection and experience in  which the ambivalence of silence is treated just as much as the  contingency of our acoustic perceptions.