The Heartbeat of Anubis (Der Herzschlag des Anubis) (1988)

4m 57s

Umatic

 

with Bettina Gruber

In The Hearbeat of Anubis, Maria Vedder and Bettina Gruber employ mythological elements from ancient Egypt and natural and staged scenes to reflect upon concepts of Life and Death.

In a ‘boustrophedonic choral dance’, the image

of Anubis — God of Death, represented by the dog or the jackal, who led the souls of the departed towards the west over the waters in the underworld — alternates with Horus, the falcon whose eyes are the sun and the moon and whose wing tips touch the earth.

These mythological scenes — memory of an ancient and oneiric past — are alternated

to two contemporary, parallel- conceived scenes: a man breathing a tooter with two feathers, which creates a rhythmic musical ode to the ka, the winging pneuma, the soul ascending to its destination; and a hunting leopard prevailing on an antelope, a powerful metaphor of the natural cycle of life.

 

Music by Bettina Gruber, Igor Tillmann, Uwe Wiesemann and Gerhard Zilligen