Konzert im toten Wald

Konzert im toten Wald brought music, painting and landscape into a shared field of perception. Set among dead spruce trees near Bergneustadt, the interdisciplinary event combined musical performances by composer and pianist Roman Nagel and Laia Genc Trio with Marlon Nikolai’s live painting.

During the performances, Nikolai developed, altered and repeatedly overpainted images in response to the unfolding music. Rather than illustrating sound, his contribution explored a process of translation: auditory information was perceived, processed through movement and transformed into visual and material traces. Rhythm, intensity, repetition and change became impulses within the emergence and transformation of the image.

Seen within Nikolai’s broader practice, the project represents an early investigation into the relationship between different channels of perception. The auditory field became an active source of information, connecting sound with perception, bodily action, pigment and matter.

The surrounding forest formed an integral spatial condition for the event. Among dead spruce trees, processes of transformation, temporality and material change were already physically present in the environment. Music, painting, body and landscape temporarily converged within a shared experiential space.