Simon Steen-Andersen

Excluded from the Dada circle for what was considered an excess of romanticism, Kurt Schwitters founded his own movement in 1920: MERZ. Driven by a desire to forge connections between all things in the world, he blurred the boundaries between disciplines, invented new artistic forms, and devoted a decade to creating the phonetic poem that would become legendary: Ursonate. In 2002, flautist Michael Schmid saw his career threatened by focal dystonia, a rare neurological disorder. A key member of the ensemble Ictus, he nevertheless continued his musical journey and found in the performance of Ursonate a decisive field of exploration, bringing it to the stage more than one hundred times. With Schmid as both guide and source material, Simon Steen-Andersen conducts a free-ranging investigation into the work and its author. Remaining faithful to the spirit of MERZ, he assembles archives, stories, sounds, and images into a montage that is as inventive as it is dizzying. What emerges is a fascinating dialogue between two artists separated by a century, brought together through the inexhaustible resonances of Ursonate.