La Vie sur Terre
The foundation La Vie sur Terre was initiated by the Dutch composer Merlijn Twaalfhoven to realize projects that include the audience in an overall experience. With the believe that contemporary, innovative art should be placed in the great open world and not only in the laboratory- or museum-like environment of theatres, concert rooms and cultural institutions, the foundation is carrying out a lot of unusual projects which immerge a broad public into a total experience for all senses.
Merlijn Twaalfhoven already run several projetcs abroad to draw the attention on certain political or social issues. For instance on October 24th 2005, in celebration of the 60th year of the UN, musicians from both the Greek and the Turkish parts of Cyprus collaborated in an immense on-location performance in the city of Nicosia.
At the conference the young composer chose to talk about the failures and problems that he had to face during his work, instead of presenting success stories. One major issue is not to talk about peace anymore, but rather about concrete issues such as music and musicians. Calling a concert a 'peace concert' always contains the claim of not having peace.
Find more information on the composer and his foundation at www.twaalfhoven.net
Watch the Documentary of the mentioned Cyprus project “Echoes across the Divide” at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6sGLwcjL2o
