The internationally acclaimed Scottish artist Douglas Gordon (*1966) presents his striking, largescale video installation “k.364”, 2010 in the Grabbe Halle of the K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen. In this 50-minute work, which is projected onto a pair of two-sided screens, the artist follows two Israeli musicians of Polish-Jewish heritage on their journey by train from Berlin to Warsaw, where they are scheduled to perform Mozart’s “Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola, and Orchestra in E flat Major, KV 364” in the National Philharmonic.
Their reflections concerning the Holocaust, the landscape, so charged with historical memory, and their visit to a synagogue in Poznan – misappropriated as a swimming hall since in the National Socialist era – are mixed with the sound of the rolling train and the soothing tones of Mozart’s symphony. The work movingly documents of the profound trust of the protagonists in the power of music against the subtly delineated background of a dark and unredeemed history.
