Close Encounter Of The Fourth Kind [live in Graz]

ABOUT

“The feeling of absurdity can jump out at a random person on a random street corner. It is elusive in its bleak nakedness, in its lackluster light. Yet this very difficulty is worth pondering. Probably a person always remains unknown to us…. In the end, everything is pointless. But the awareness of absurdity is at the same time the discovery of our freedom. We realize that we have nothing to lose. Rules, duties, plans and worries become meaningless. And yet we must think of Sisyphus as a happy man.”

For quite some time I have been interested in the case of Betty and Barney Hill from the early 1960s. The American couple claimed that they have been abducted by extraterrestrial beings and to have been medically examined on their spaceship. This incident is the beginning of the scientific investigation of The Phenomenon, for which until now several hypothesis exist. It is also conceptual basis of this work.

The composition Close Encounter Of The Fourth Kind [live in Graz] can be seen, among other things, in the tradition of the Theatre of the Absurd. The piece describes an existential encounter between two terrestrial musicians and four – possibly dysmusical – aliens.

Who are you? Why? What is music? What does ‘always’ mean? What is real?

In the absurd soundscape of the coincidental encounter of two utterly alien worlds, some of the most essential questions of our existence are raised in a seemingly naive and at the same time macabre way: fundamental questions of our existence.

Belma Bešlić-Gál [05/2015]