Penned by Riccardo Pianezzola

Anne Imhof’s latest  production ANGST 2 at Hamburger Bahnhof was a unique experience. The living, moving art installation generated an unsettling atmosphere of disturbance and beauty and it performed much like an opera made up of a new wave, multi-part art performance which included a musical composition, paintings, livestock and sculptural elements. In this opera there was not a stage that separated the public from the performers from the actors; there wasn’t a tale spoken with words.

This unique opera slowly and progressively unfolded through the incremental appearance of it’s different characters, to then climax with their incremental disappearance. But the action persisted even after the last character had disappeared with the continued presence of the paintings and sculptural objects.

What happened here? I saw a lover, I saw a clown, I saw a falcon, I saw a beast. What did all of it mean? I had no idea. I didn’t want to know; something strange was taking place. I felt a Dionysian sense of relaxation and anxiety at the same time. I saw beauty and brutality together, in the same place but not at the same moment.

I felt the magic.

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