Janyce Michellod/R349-178
(2009)
Mara Mattuschka/Königin der Nacht (2006)
SUPERAMAS/Play Mobile
(2005)
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Compositions + Commisioned Work
Watch: R349-178
Over the past few years Bernhard created commisioned music and sound designs for several dance performances, theatre pieces, videos, films and radio pieces.
His most recent collaboration for the stage was the creation of live music for swiss choreographer Janyce Michellod’s piece R349-178 premiered at Semper Kleine Szene in Dresden, Germany in June 2009. The piece features 2 dancers, one visual artist and one musician on stage involved in a structured improvisation scheme. Each performance continued where to recent one had stopped and thus created one large evolving performance piece.
Musical compositions for theatre also include work for austrian choreographer Milli Bitterli. He wrote music and created sound designs for several of her dance pieces e.g. Silence Sucks performed at Impulstanz Festival Vienna in 2003.
In collaboration with austrian film maker Mara Mattuschka. Bernhard created music for several of her films/videos e.g. the 60 second short Köngin der Nacht (2006). For this piece they rearranged Mozart's aria of the Queen of the Night from the "Magic Flute" and turned it into a trashy electro punk piece featuring Mara's manipulated psyched voice. The piece was part of the Mozart Minute project and was shown in various movie theatres in Vienna, on TV and various international film festivals.
One more example for this type of work is the collaboration with the Austrian-French performance collective SUPERAMAS. For an evening at the Wiener Konzerthaus in 2005 he created a musical track of badly manipulated Richard Clayderman music used for the SUPERAMAS video installation When We Where Kings and a special live soundtrack of an installment of their performative installation Play Mobile.
Another constant field for artistic work over the last 10 years or so was radio. The body of work includes radio plays combining spoken word with electronic music and sound, live radio mixes, web radio projects and webcasts.
Most of the pieces were broadcast by ORF Kunstradio, a radio show on the austrian national radio dedicated to experimental radio art. Some of it also went on the air in Germany (Radio Bremen, Sender Freies Berlin) and through numerous webcasts.
The most recent of these pieces was a live radio performance with the title Portraying the Spectra of Toys which Bernhard realized in collaboration with Joao Castro Pinto, sound artist and composer from Lisbon, Portugal. The entire piece was based on processed sounds of children's toys and thus a reflection about the social, technological and cultural change which can precisely be documented by the development of our toys. (project page)
These radio projects include several pieces in collaboration with Austrian playwright Robert Woelfl, the last being Kaufkraft (2001). Several radio projects appeared under the collaborative identity of Nerve Theory (aka Bernhard Loibner & Tom Sherman) e.g. H5N1 - there is no privacy at the speed of light, a series of short radio pieces being broadcast on Kunstradio every week throughout the year 2006. (project page)