Imagine the official big party is over and everyone has gone home. In the square there are flyers, sweets, crumbs and other garbage. But also pulverized remnants of the EU anthem "Ode to Joy", Ludwig van Beethoven's finale of his ninth symphony, which had recently been performed on stage. And that the pigeons, the finches and the comforters in the square, who are now at peace, eagerly retrieve the anthem. Suddenly, it sits in the throat, mingles with the chirping, and the chirp is eventually formed into a metallic chirping song in the very highest whistle register. A strange and almost unbearable heartbreaking smile, which eventually becomes black from a new and unexpected direction. Of human voices filling the air with the words: "Everything is gonna be alright." 

Composer Maja Ratjke:
“Ode to Joy, by Beethoven, was performed under the direction of Leonard Bernstein at a concert to mark the fall of the Berlin Wall, used in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. Hitler celebrated his birthdays with the theme, and the government of Rhodesia made it their anthem. The prisoners in German concentration camps played it. The music was also used by Mitterrand's inauguration in 1981. In 2012, we celebrated Ode to Joy's 40th anniversary as the national anthem for the EU.

Thanks to Neil Young and Edvard Grieg for inspiration. A Dismantled Ode To The Moral Value Of Art refers to over four decades with Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" as the EU anthem. The music begins with riddles beginning with textures that sound like vocal approaches to older electronic music. The music builds up and fragments of Beethoven and Grieg slip into the texture.

Warp Visuals:
The SARS-CoV-2 outbreak began in December 2019. The virus was identified by Chinese health authorities on 7th January 2020. Since then, the pandemic has affected lives across the globe. Social distancing, quarantines, lock downs, lost jobs, bankruptcies, and lost lives. We have undergone the most drastic measures in the Western world since World War II. The time in lock down has in many ways felt like a kind of prison, deprivation of freedom and quality of life, like living in a bubble or inside a dome. Fortunately, we see that measures such as testing, contact tracing and social distancing are helping, and we hope that things will work out in the end.

- "Everything is gonna be alright." 
❤

Production Stills & Elements