Three questions for: Johannes Frauenschuh

What connects you with the life and work of Beethoven?

As a person, artist, and cultural scientist, I approach the figure of Ludwig van Beethoven on multiple levels. His life and work become a projection surface for me, inevitably interwoven with those images and narratives that have been spun around him in hindsight.

My perceptions of Beethoven are probably very strongly influenced by these attributions or prejudices concerning his life and work. Some of his works are very close to me, others remain (still) at a certain distance. Yet, again and again, his music seems to function like a kind of landscape: It unfolds in layers, from delicately suggested lines to monumental formations, interspersed with breaks and flowing transitions. In this, I recognize a quiet kinship with my own work inlandscape painting. It is not the image of a landscape that is in the foreground for me, but the condensation of color and form towards rhythm and atmosphere.

What excites you about the tour and what are your personal and professional expectations?

I draw an analogy between the tour concept and an extended landscape: The tour not only has a geographical component, but also a social, historical, sonic, etc. In my own artistic practice, landscape is never static; rather, it emerges through movement, perception, and memory.

Within the framework of the tour, I expect to deepen my interest in the intersections that exist between the fields of painting and music. How can color tones be translated into materialized color and form? Professionally, I see the tour as an opportunity to bring my visual work back into more collaborative contexts. Lastly, the tour also excites me because of its experimental nature: it is not only a stage but also a laboratory.  

If Beethoven were sitting opposite you: What topics would you address? What questions would you ask?

I would be interested to know whether Beethoven perceives composition as something physical, as a process that takes place with and through the medium of the human body? Can analogies be drawn to my visual practice as 'movement through space and time'?

I would, for example, ask him about the design principles of repetition and variation and also where he draws inspiration for his work: from nature, from inner tensions, from the fields of tension of coexistence, from the analysis of sounds themselves? I might ask him: How would you visualize silence? Last but not least, I would like to explore the relationship between art and society from his perspective. In a time of political upheaval, what role does art play?does freedom mean in this context?