A New World, Jonas Englert, 2022
Video, 1-channel, various aspect ratios, 35:02

A New World is a video work based on the eponymous concert, featuring Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Sexteto místico (W131) [I], Ludwig van Beethoven’s Bagatelle (Op. 119, No. 7) [II], Anton Webern’s Fünf Stücke für Orchester (Op. 10) [III], Claude Debussy’s Deux danses (No. L 113 (103)) [IV], and Toshio Hosokawa’s Im Frühlingsgarten [V]. In response to the compositions, A New World is structured in five parts [I–V], five explorations of the concept of world through moving images, framed by a prologue and an epilogue, drawing on found footage, video material of the orchestra, and the artist’s own recordings. A musical-poetic video work in which the individual parts each function in their own way, while entering into relation with one another as a whole, telling a larger story, unfolding a broader context: from the emergence of the world as life itself, as a mystery of space and time, microscopically, where life begins [I]; from bacteria to the human face, the gaze, the nonverbal as a metaphor for dialogue itself [II+III]; from the head to the carnal, to the materiality of the social body within the mass, the dualism of freedom and state power [IV]; to leaving this world, alone, as a technical artifact in search of another [V].

Created in the context of the audiovisual concert series The Micro Concerts of the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra, conducted by Kent Nagano.