Joy of Brotherhood
2020 / video 10’ / installation
collaboration with Genda Fluid and Alexander Obrazumov
The Symphony № 9 in D minor, op.125 is Beethoven’s final complete symphony and undoubtedly one of the supreme achievements in the history of Western music.
It also birthed the belief in ‘the curse of the 9th symphony’: any composer who completes a 9th symphony (starting from Beethoven) will die right after.
The authors of The Joy of Brotherhood project assume that the curse is more likely connected
with Friedrich Schiller’s text Ode an die Freude (Ode to Joy) used by Beethoven in the final 4th movement.
Friedrich Schiller wrote the poem in 1785 as a "celebration of the brotherhood of man" but dismissed it in later life as “typical of the bad taste of the age”.
2020 saw a wave of protests, opposed to the dominant male "brotherhood", which has been noticeably gaining momentum for centuries.
The Joy of Brotherhood asks the question: can we ever remove the age-old curse?