Emergency Solos
by Christina Kubisch (1975)
reenacted and expanded by Francesco Marzano (2025)
In 1975 the artist Christina Kubisch conceived and performed for the first time the Emergency Solos, a series of pieces in which she reflected through her body and her instrument – the flute, which is used both musically and “sculpturally” – on topics such as personal and artistic liberation from the conventions, her role as a (female) artist in the (male-dominated) cultural enterprise, expectations and strict categorisations of the society – from which she proposed a kind of emergency exit, starting with these solos.
Exactly 50 years later I reenacted, with her permission, most of her pieces and put them side by side with new Emergency Solos conceived by me.
A lot has changed in the society and in the cultural life since then, but some battles and struggles are always actual and relevant.
The Emergency Solos are pieces about identity torn between personal vocation and social impositions, about limits in communication, about the abuse of power by institutions that still decide what is art and who is allowed to do it, about the paradox between the intimacy of the relationship with one’s instrument and the unavoidable public dimension of art.
They mix autobiographical elements and episodes (curiosity, depression, passion, imagination, self-doubt, addiction, failure, ambition, the love-hate relationship with my instrument, …), oscillate between slapstick and ancestral images, gentleness and disturbance, and challenge the limits of body, instrument and breath – understood in the sense of the Latin spiritus, both as breath and as soul. They are a quest for an authentical voice, for alternative paths and narrations, for sounds, images, connections, extremes.
List of the pieces
[CK] = Christina Kubisch, [FM] = Francesco Marzano
It’s so touchy [CK]; Week-End [CK]; Variations on a classical theme I [CK]; Variations on a classical theme II [CK]; Private piece [CK]; Break [CK]; Untitled (Mummy) [CK]; Play it like a real man [FM]; The Future [FM]; À bout de souffle [FM]; Piece against Aphasia [FM]; Water Music [FM]; Little Bang [FM]; Vor der Erstarrung [FM]; La flûte [FM]; Sabre dance [FM]; Spīritus ephēmerus [FM]; A man should always have an occupation of some kind [FM]; Gravity 9,81 [FM]; Firework [FM]; Ignis Flautus [FM]; Inside the sound [FM]; Lichtspiel [FM].
This version of the Emergency Solos was performed in cooperation with MAI (Marina Abramović Institute) and Kunsthaus Zürich at Theater Neumarkt in Zürich, 10–12 January 2025, as a 3-day-long durational performance.
The studio documentation was made at Theater Marabu in Bonn, 4 February 2025 – Philip Yakushin (Foto & Video); Francesco Marzano (Video Edit).