The following contribution is written by the Carinthian-born, Vienna-based author Greta Lauer. She attended the performance of Glitch Choir at Impulstanz on July 14th at Mumok. (You can find the original German text here.)

White eye 

No ground 

No shore 

Horizon 

Sky 

Celestial Body

In the white eye 

Scratching 

Voices 

Fibers 

Nerves 

Veins 

Twitching 

Jerking 

Sliding 

Through the pupil slit 

Voices 

Devouring

Burrowing

Falling

Into

Finding

Their apparatus 

Glottides, glottides 

Voices 

In chords 

Glottides, glottides 

Spin 

A song 

The song 

Digs 

In mouth cavities 

Material

Takes

Shape

Draws

The song

From

Each other

Tearing

The song

Tears

Over the lid

Sisters, water spirits

Outspoken lovely softly 

Long-time quite still

Rising

Sisters

Water spirits

Unbelievably bright

Blue

From tears

They conjure twitching

Traces

Do not trust the flow

Trickling cheerfully down 

Below is above 

Above in between 

Always: instead of 

Always: turning to 

Now it bustles now 

Flows sweeps darts flashes 

Runs and stirs 

Even the silent 

Catch hold

In cracks

Fractures

Lusting

In gaps

Lovers

Tongues

Do words grow 

At heels? 

Under the callus? 

You 

I

Also?

Voices dropping into eyes 

Exuding Tears

Stroking over shoulders 

Holding head 

Turning it 

Sucking

Sucking 

Robbing

Scratching with the edges 

Of looks 

Signs into the backs 

Rushing forward 

Drooling wishes 

On eyelids 

Staring

Standing rigid 

Pulling

Folding back 

Inwards 

Embracing us, holding the gaze 

During another conflict 

Shoes off

Spectacle us

Chaos

Cosmos

Reaches

White eye

Sisters! Water spirits! 

From the fear-water 

From the fear-water 

Of white eyes 

New mouths 

Stretching necks 

Following trail 

To the other shore 

From the sky 

Forking bodies 

Third ones

Dropping

From mouth corners 

To the ground 

Catching voices 

In cloths 

Bustling

A thousand summers 

Soaking the fabric 

From vocal cords 

Spinning 

Third eyes 

Between foreheads 

Sisters 

Water spirits 

Third ones

Were moistening bouquets 

Wreaths 

From throats 

For cathedrals 

Of dead thinkers  

From the hollows 

Of black paperbacks 

A lament scaffold

For a thousand years 

Now breaks 

The old song 

Into new sounds 

Over lids 

Of white eyes 

They rattle 

Glottides glottides 

We rattle 

We rattle 

With the throats 

Glottides glottides 

Our apparatus 

Into the white 

We sing 

With a third eye: 

Hair gel errors hoodies 

Cables mushrooms planes 

Jeans fabric thorns 

Socks microphone 

Chocolate fabric 

Laminator anger 

Cups ashes 

Terrazzo rivets 

Paper dragonfly lotion 

Forks wind tulip 

Salt syringes comets 

Fog flip-flops 

Cisterns band-aid 

Piercings wire balm 

Clips chewing gum 

Pipettes candles capers 

Shells microchips 

Mooncup tassels 

Metronome cough drops 

Buttons lamp 

Rice shadow confetti 

Then go seek bodies 

Then go give afterbirth to wishes

Then go over maps of concern 

Then go make order 

Then go interrupt speeches 

Then go buy carpets 

Then go occupy places 

Then go stroke shoulders 

Then go weave baskets out of desire 

Then go weave baskets out of suffering 

Then go lay songs in dreams 

Then go to eat 

Then go 

Until we come 

We go 

To the place 

Of your sadness 

Heave it 

Over the lid 

Of the white eye 

Into the echo 

Of connections 

With third ones

Greta Lauer, born in Klagenfurt/Celovec, currently lives in Vienna. She studied German literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis. She writes dramatic texts, lyrical texts, and prose, performs with the group Lunchbreak, and has been published in various literary magazines. Her debut, Gedeih und Verderb, was published by Luftschacht Verlag in March 2023. (more information about the author)

Community in dissonance: inspired by the archaic (and, across cultures, predominantly female) tradition of public mourning, Deva Schubert devotes herself to the voice, or more precisely, the lament, as a collective technique of mourning. With the tool of the “glitch” – the interruption or faulty transmission of an image or a video – she deconstructs an Italian lamento. Usually a strictly digital, intangible phenomenon, Schubert and her co-performer Chihiro Araki make the glitch audible, visible and palpable in dance through their bodies and voices. Glitch Choir invites the audience to understand disruption as an opening, in which complex, resistant and historically oftentimes disregarded forms of grief can be expressed. The mumok’s white cube becomes a resonance chamber where discords and jarring notes form a collective song. (more information about Glitch Choir)

An annual performance programme featuring more than 50 productions at the city’s principal venues, over 200 workshops and research projects plus the music programme Soçial combine to make ImPulsTanz one of the most important festivals of contemporary dance and performance worldwide. (more information about ImPulsTanz)