ergon ensemble
contemporary music, athens

Ergon Ensemble performs Jani Christou as part of the Christou retrospective by Documenta 14 in Kassel, Germany.

Anaparastasis III ‘The Pianist’ cuts deep into one the most primitive and universal fears of mankind—the inability to communicate.

Involving a pianist (actor) attempting to communicate with the piano in several different manners, the work unfolds against an unceasing continuum of electronic threads of sound which inform the psychodrama throughout.

Praxis for 12 (1966)
“Any living art keeps generating an overall logic fed by a collectivity of characteristic actions. Whenever an action is purposefully performed to conform with the current overall logic characteristic of the art, that action is a ‘praxis,’ or a purposeful and characteristic action.

But whenever an action is purposefully performed so as to go beyond the current overall logic characteristic of the art, the action is a ‘metapraxis,’ or a purposeful non-characteristic action: a ‘meta-action’ … For instance, a conductor conducting during a concert is a praxis, but if he is also required to walk about, speak, scream, or perform any other action not strictly connected to conducting, that could be a metapraxis …
A metapraxis is an implosion, a tension under the surface of a single medium which threatens that very medium’s meaning barrier … A violation within a single order of things.” —Jani Christou