The scientific concept of parallax refers to the apparent shift in the position of an object when viewed from different vantage points. Metaphorically, it can represent a psychological, philosophical, or artistic change in the understanding of a situation, idea, or truth, depending on one’s perspective. The title of 3hd’s “Underworld” concert and performance event at Silent Green Kulturquartier’s Betonhalle suggests such multiplicity, with its subterranean prefix representing just one of many possible worlds and interpretations.
As its own modification to the repurposed Wedding crematorium complex, the below-ground concrete hall hosts a monumental night of music and live performance, ritual and ceremony, that delves into the infinite possibilities, potentialities, and planes of existence influencing our every day. Casey MQ explores the fluid and unreliable nature of memory through introspective piano and vocal arrangements, and Yawning Portal’s highly deconstructed and improvised live set creates an ambient devotional of “music to levitate to.” Playing material from their forthcoming album, The Fertile Crescent’s Oxhy and Susu Laroche merge folk anthems and mystic drone metal to explore the sublime space of communal ritual and emotional exchange. MIRA新伝統’s performance of sentient geography and ceremonial resistance to commodification challenges societal norms through their cosmic narratives blending experimental fiction, shamanic culture, and AI-generated visuals.
Sorour Darabi’s “FROM THE THROAT TO THE DAWN” centerpiece embraces transformation, identity, and contemporary myth through performance and dance. Created in collaboration with Pablo Altar and Ange Halliwell, the performance reinterprets “night” through the lens of One Thousand and One Nights’s central Scheherazade character. Bassem Saad & Sanja Grozdanić’s script-based performance, “Permanent Trespass (Beirut of the Balkans and the American Century)” contends with the possibility and mutability of mourning through protracted catastrophe as the frame of who or what is being mourned appears to shift and unsettle, giving form to the double exposure of past and present occurring at moments of historic transition. Meanwhile, vocal ensemble XTC IN THE XIV applies live electronics to early polyphonic choral arrangements, using time-stretched and pitch-shifted samples to probe the uncanny and cross-temporal relationships in music, while Yi Li’s “Eternal Death” video installation recreates and reorganizes abstract sensory experiences in physical and digital spaces. Shaly López’s scenography generates atmospheric compositions that challenge perception by staging non-physical dimensions, such as dreams and meditative states through sound, light, and scent.
The existence of an underworld assumes an overworld, and many more worlds that reflect each other in an infinite mirror of duplicate glass surfaces that go on forever. This effect of light bouncing back and forth, at equal yet opposite angles, creates the illusion of limitless space and reveals deeper insights into the boundless possibilities of parallax.
