Vernissage on 25 August 2023 at 11 a.m. at the visitor information desk of the Buchenwald memorial site

Musical-radiophonic collage by Juan Allende-Blin on texts by Jorge Semprún and Samuel Beckett

"They huddled together in the sleet, in the icy mist of that day. No sound came from their tumbling mass. Only sometimes the sound of a herd was heard. The sound of a herd penned in, clattering its hooves on the cobblestones of a marketplace." This is how Jorge Semprún describes the arrival of a group of Polish Jews at Buchenwald concentration camp. The composer Juan Allende-Blin takes this simple and therefore poignant text as the starting point for his radio play "Monologue / Dialogue". Allende-Blin processes Semprún's words in a composition for instruments and sounds.

He combines them with his own voice, and with a poem by Samuel Beckett. The result is a radiophonic sound collage in which all the elements stand side by side on an equal footing."Perhaps the musical events generate a deeper understanding than the texts that are used.Music and sounds also possess semantics - only this leaves us speechless because we cannot render them in words.All the components sublimate themselves, they become equal figures," says the artist about his project.Juan Allende-Blin, born in Santiago de Chile in 1928, came to Germany in 1951 and lives in Essen.He composes instrumental works, ballets and radiophonic collages.In his writings, he deals in particular with the music of exile.

Playback devices for the installation can be borrowed from the visitor information desk in the memorial.

25 August to 10 September 2023, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed on Mondays.

An event of the Kunstfest Weimar in cooperation with the Buchenwald Memorial