{"id":7298,"date":"2022-02-25T15:10:57","date_gmt":"2022-02-25T14:10:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/?p=7298"},"modified":"2022-02-28T11:56:19","modified_gmt":"2022-02-28T10:56:19","slug":"hmdw-kolumne-von-stephan-polzer-dominik-foertsch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/2022\/02\/25\/hmdw-kolumne-von-stephan-polzer-dominik-foertsch\/?lang=en","title":{"rendered":"hmdw Column by Stephan Polzer: Dominik F\u00f6rtsch"},"content":{"rendered":"Enrolled at the mdw since:<\/b> 2017 (preparatory programme)\/2018 (degree programme)
\nArea(s) of study:<\/b> Media Composition and Applied Music, Electroacoustic Composition
\nFavourite place at the mdw and why: <\/b>That depends a lot on the season and on what kind of day I\u2019m having. I really like the two terraces of the new Future Art Lab, for instance. I can look across the entire campus from there, and it\u2019s a pretty nice place to have coffee. During the summer months, it\u2019s nice anywhere at the University \u2026 but during the winter, it really is wonderful to emerge from the rehearsal rooms or studios in the evening and enjoy the peace and quiet of the inner courtyard.
\nFavourite place in Vienna: <\/b>The green landscape of the Prater is way up there on my list.
\nWhat I wish I\u2019d known back when I began studying here: <\/b>How to read music properly. (laughs)<\/i><\/p>\n
\"\"
\u00a9 Stephan Polzer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When I compose<\/b>, I\u2019m actually doing something entirely different.
\nWhen I stand onstage<\/b>, I\u2019m usually working.
\nTopics that are preoccupying me quite a bit at the moment include<\/b>: the pandemic, the climate crisis, the marginalisation of women, people of colour, and the LGBTQI+ community, conspiracy narratives and hostility towards science, gender roles, patriarchal power structures, (my) privileges, the tension between art, culture, and artisanship, realities of life and thought, the universe, granular synthesis, coloured noise, baby clothing.
\nI feel my greatest success thus far is: <\/b>It might seem weird to call this \u201csuccess\u201d, but: it\u2019s nice that I\u2019m still alive. Oh yeah, and a super-kitschy answer would be: my son, of course. (laughs)<\/i><\/p>\n

What do you find special about being onstage and\/or about these moments spent before the audience that can\u2019t really be captured in their original form?<\/h5>\n

Dominik F\u00f6rtsch (DF):<\/b> It\u2019s exactly like the question puts it: I can\u2019t really reproduce such a moment, but I can attempt to describe what I find interesting about it. Ultimately, every (artistic) exchange, every performance, every concert is really nothing more than just a piece of life spent together. And ideally, we attempt to open up during these collectively lived parts of our lives\u2014perhaps approaching a different, new, more interesting, enchanting, playful, comforting, unique form of truth or authenticity. Anyway, I think it\u2019s wonderful to attempt that.<\/p>\n

Have you already spent some time with the theme of \u201cephemerality\u201d? And if so, how?<\/h5>\n

DF:<\/b> I\u2019m always dealing with it in some way, shape, or form. The theme of ephemerality, in its most existential form as death, is an important one to me generally and also personally. For an actor or a performer, but also for a musician, all moments are fleeting. Music, once made, will never again sound as it did just then, not even if recorded. As a composer, I at least have some sort of idea or product that, in theory, will be durable and be allowed to live on. In a very concrete sense, however, I\u2019m very interested in the players. And less in my own music. What I prefer to do is contribute little interjections, instructions, irritants, or rules of play as a way of calling upon the artists to discover themselves. Which can also go badly, of course. (laughs)<\/i><\/p>\n

\"\"
\u00a9 Stephan Polzer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

To what extent does ephemerality (in art) play a role in your life? Does it, for example, influence you in your composing?<\/h5>\n

DF:<\/b> \u201cEverything that arises is worth it to perish.\u201d \u2013 Mephistopheles, Faust I<\/i>.
\nWhat does it mean to live? What does it mean to live in the here and now, in this place and as this person with this appearance, in this society with this history? Every perception is just a fraction of reality\u2014and a word, a gesture, or a scent can upend your entire existence. Why live at all? In the knowledge that we\u2019re destroying our environment, exploiting and killing each other for the profit and wealth of a (very) few? How to live without participating in that? Is it possible? It always strikes me as unbelievably crazy when I think about the universe and ask myself why we don\u2019t all just run around screaming all the time, seeing as we do have an inkling of what lies behind the stars. Ultimately, nothing\u2019s of any lasting value. The only thing that remains is what you\u2019ve experienced. I\u2019m fortunate to be able to live in a wealthy, privileged society and to have the luxury of contemplating questions like this one. And I think we bear a rather weighty responsibility: to deal with things politically, artistically, culturally, and humanely; to instigate discussions, provide food for thought; and\u2014it\u2019s naive and utopian, perhaps, but the universe really doesn\u2019t care\u2014to do whatever we possibly can to make this world a happier place for everyone and everything that inhabits it!","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Enrolled at the mdw since: 2017 (preparatory programme)\/2018 (degree programme); Area(s) of study: \ufeffMedia Composition and Applied Music\ufeff, \ufeffElectroacoustic Composition<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":246,"featured_media":7301,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[1232,1093,1191,1235,541],"class_list":["post-7298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-column","tag-2022-1","tag-hmdwkolumne","tag-stephanpolzer","tag-studierende","tag-hmdw"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/246"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7298"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7400,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7298\/revisions\/7400"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}