Since september 2007 Falk is doing a practice-based PhD at the Dutch Belgian institute DocARTES/Orpheus Institute Gent and Leiden University. Supervised by Frans de Ruiter, Yvonne Spielmann and Paul Koek, the research entitled SHIFTING IDENTITIES is located in the field of contemporary music theatre and performance.

ABSTRACT

How many parameters from the musician's profession can be removed and still keep him a musician? Which activities of his profession does a musician need in order to be a musician? How far can a musician reach into other art forms like theatre or dance, by specifically using his musical abilities and actions?

By abstracting away abilities of the professional musician in a theatrical setting, the research seeks to make 'something else' visible; it seeks to develops new types of task performance in order to let the musician become theatrical without any necessity to act.

By systematically leaving out certain specifically musical abilities and performative actions of the profession of a musician on the one hand, and on the other hand using specifically musical abilities of a professional musician - as for example the ability to execute and to remember complex rhythms, or using originally 'musical' movements like hand movements playing an instrument as pure choreographic movement material - new performances will be developed and performed as outcome of the research. The (professional) identity of the musician is conceptually shifting towards an 'in-between space' of a musician-performer, in a theatrical form on the boundaries of music, installation and performance in the context of postdramatic (music-)theatre and performance in the digital age.

Articles

"… as if you would…" (2009)

in the 2010 journal of the Artistic Research, Theory and Innovation group (ARTI) of the Amsterdam School of the Arts: Starting with music, continuing elsewhere

download journal

Synchronous differences: Thespian Play, in the new book of the FIRT/IFTR Research group for Intermediality in Theatre and Performance, to be published in mid 2010

Tussenruimtes – Over potenties van vernieuwing in interdisciplinaire mengvormen van (muziek-) theater en performance (2008)

commissioned by November Music Festival in s’Hertogenbosch

er tussen – over de intermediale aspecten in het werk van Heiner Goebbels (2008)

for the program book of the Heiner Goebbels Festivals The Hague;

German version published on Heiner Goebbels' website