sungazing | 2022
Kraftwerk Berlin for X100 Festival

sungazing premiered in November 2022 at the massive former power plant, Kraftwerk Berlin in the context of the X100 Festival celebrating the legacy of Iannis Xenakis. Spread throughout the entire main space using three stages, peripheral space and everywhere in between, LABOUR’s performance was based on a sonic dramaturgy of algorithmic composition that included eight stacks of loudspeakers, 30 percussionists, a string sextet, bass clarinet, printed fabrics, four dancers, and six performers. This iteration of sungazing uses their own sonic activations format to intersect and expand the concert experience: instrumentalists move from the stage to distribute themselves throughout the audience; a mass of percussionists move from the distant periphery through the audience and back; performers carry 24-meters of printed fabrics in a procession that intersects the audience and reinforces the spatial listening environment by drawing attention to shifting temporary sites of activity all around the audience. Events are de-centralised and happen simultaneously; audience members have unique experiences based on where they are and how they move through the space, while musical sections evolve to fleetingly embrace both the intensity of spectacle and the directness of grid-time rhythms before transcending again into alternative temporal modalities.

A central performance, sungazing by the group LABOUR, sums up the scale and power of the weekend. With sprawling allusions to Greek mythology, Zoroastrianism, social rituals and techno hedonism, it’s all too much, and risks becoming a sound and light spectacle. But there’s no denying the drums, voices and sounds echoing around the space tap into Xenakis’ enduring and uncanny power. - The Wire, February 2023 issue