Magic Mountain, or Pathological Opera (2018) multimedia installation

In its ambiguity, Thomas Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain, which is a significant source
of inspiration for this work, has interested me most as a metaphor of leaving to the
afterlife, of experiencing death and oblivion, loss of personality, isolation and escape
into nothingness. What I see in the book is both degradation and sublimity. There are
many plots in the novel, but those that I value most are: illness, body and time. Because
what I see in them is both degradation and sublimity.
In my work, I aim to look for expression of the human body as of life on the edge of
death, of matter flowing endlessly; presenting the man who, when put in pathological
conditions, is left on the fringe of time, history and society, who is determined by the
ritual of physiological functions, and remains in the state of dimensionless present or
eternity – is “frozen now”.

Concept, libretto, director, set designer, costumes, production: Adam Dudek
Music: Tadeusz Wielecki
Cameraman: Bastien Loisseau
Choreographic cooperation: Paweł Grala
assistant director / photographs: Mia Dudek
Actor: Wojtek Łaba
Music performers: Joanna Freszel – voice, Tadeusz Wielecki – contrabass
Sound engineering: Tadeusz Sudnik
Film production: mniam.tv
Post-production: Efektura

premiere: 64th “Warsaw Autumn” International Festival of Contemporary Music 2021, Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Czapski Palace Gallery.

(For acces to the video please contact me)

(below) the “Warsaw Autumn” 2021 show
(photo. Grzegorz Mart)