Novi_sad

Lars von Trier directed, conceptualized, and produced a project entitled ”Gesamt”.

What happens when a master challenges the people? When everyone is invited to reinterpret some of the greatest art pieces of our time? Is it within everyone to make art? And do we stand out the most when we stand together? 

Gesamt’s explicit translation is a ’’whole’’ or ’’cumulative’’ and ’’Gesamt Art’’ can be translated into an ”ideal work of art”, a ’’universal work of art’’ or ’’synthesis for the arts’’. The term has been used by the German composer of classical music Richard Wagner. He used the word as a reference to an art piece that is put together by as many different art forms as possible, be it poetry, music, visual arts, dance or drama as well architecture and opera.

Trier has selected six artworks/challenges and artists have been asked to respond in these challenges with the contribution of a film or music piece. These artworks are from Paul Gauguin, Albert Speer, Cesar Franck, James Joyce, August Strindberg and Sammy Davis Jr.

Novi_sad’s music music has been selected by Lars von Trier and he is contributing in ”Gesamt” with two musical pieces associated to James Joyce’s ”Ulysses”.

The first track is part of ”Riotous Viscera”, a new composition based exclusively on vibration recordings from Manhattan + Brooklyn bridges in NYC. Also in use, was the voice of a woman mourning her murdered children during the civil war in Bosnia, 1996.

The second track is part of a piece which will be published by Sub Rosa in ”Anthology of Electronic and Noise Music #7”, entitled ”The Insolence of a Poppy”.




”Gesamt” made its world premiere on October 12th 2012, at Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen. The result was between one or four films, but some rules applied: ”Gesamt” was shown in a dark room with four large screens in each corner. The screens were running at the same time, but they didn’t show the material simultaneously. In this sense the spirit of a gesamtkunstwerk was visible in the screening itself. 

”Gesamt” is part of Copenhagen Art Festival.