Zauberberg

Description

A few years ago, an idea sprouted while I was reading Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. An idea not born from the story itself, but from the traces and aura it evokes. This was what I was looking for: a sonic and auratic journey through the memories of a place lost in the heights of the Swiss mountains. A century after the events described in the book, we went to the very places of the story, attempting to capture the sounds that might have resonated at the time, and the ghosts that might still have wandered there. Zauberberg is based on these recordings, on recordings of the music played by Hans Castorp (the novel's main character), on acoustic and electronic instruments, as well as on digital processing. The result is a unique conception of time and duration, an exploration of what remains and what is lost, a meditation on the dissolution and persistence of the aura that permeates all things. — Kassel Jaeger, Nov. 19, 2015