ACHT BRÜCKEN: Fabian Dudek | Empire

Is this even a movie? If you want to answer the question in the affirmative, it is a film that has been stripped of most of the attributes that generally distinguish a moving image from a photograph. A fixed camera shot captures the top of the Empire State Building. Andy Warhol exposed over six hours of celluloid in this way, completely without sound, from the onset of dusk until deep into the night. According to the instructions of the New York avant-garde icon, the material is to be projected in 16 instead of 24 frames per second, resulting in a performance time of over 8 hours. There is a philosophical dimension to slowing down a still image.

The film will be shown in full length in the Stadtgarten. Saxophonist and composer Fabian Dudek and his quintet will play their own soundtrack for 50 minutes. It is the phase of transition from day to night, from light to dark, a very gradual yet drastic change that is barely perceptible to the temporal resolution of the eye. Is the contrast accentuated musically? Is the still image acoustically set in motion or painted over in sound colors? Dudek wants to approach the project with his own new compositional technique.

This concert is organized in cooperation with ACHT BRÜCKEN | Musik für Köln, the European Center for Jazz and Contemporary Music Stadtgarten Köln and NICA artist development.