84 days is the length of time the 25 musicians of the B Orquesta Experimental de Instrumentos Nativos (OEIN) spent in enforced quarantine in Music Academy Rheinsberg near Berlin together with PHØNIX16 during the spring of 2020. Having arrived shortly before the beginning of the festival in order to prepare the opening project for MaerzMusik 2020, they became victims of the rapidly spreading COVID-19 pandemic. The festival had to be cancelled, borders were immediately closed and travel suspended. What began as a remarkable musical encounter between the two ensembles became an intense experience of living and working together under extreme conditions – 84 days that have also had a deep impact on the artistic process, the form and themes of their project “Environment”.

One extraordinary year later MaerzMusik 2021 will present "Environment" in its new, adapted form that has been shaped by the continued progress of the pandemic. The musicians of OEIN cannot be present in person; public health measures make a live performance impossible. “Environment” has turned into an acousmatic and filmic composition for voices, indigenous instruments, trumpet, inner piano, percussion, kinetic sound sculptures and video. A work from many layers of material carrying within them the collective experience of the pandemic as well as reflecting contemporary experiences of their surroundings, environment and milieu: socially, in relation to nature, politically, philosophically, acoustically and as artistic forms and practices.

In addition to the two-hour stage production – presented in two different film versions – we show a series of artistic film and video works that were created in the course of the 84-day enforced stay at Rheinsberg Music Academy.