HOPE + EMMA CRITCHLEY ‘NAVEL’

Audiovisual Concert Installation


In NAVEL, Berlin band Hope and British underwater cinematographer and environmental activist Emma Critchley collaborate to create an immersive audiovisual concert installation.

In large-scale films and projections, the audience is taken into the “Animal Flower Cave”, an underwater cave in the Atlantic close to Barbados. The cave, whose coral floor is estimated to be 400,000 years old, was filled and emptied by the waves with every tide and thus shaped by the sea over thousands of years. Showing endless, vast patterns, colors, and a power that is older and greater than that of humans, Emma Critchley’s films docu- ment this place of solitude and life evolving on its own terms. Intertwined with Hope’s music, which, in a radically minimalist and consistently clear manner speaks of addiction and healing, self-determination and solace, NAVEL seeks to show the beauty of not only the underwater world, but life itself in its fragility and splendor, and together remind of the necessity to respect and cherish it.



Premiered at Pop-Kultur Berlin Festival Berlin, August 28, 2024


Concept and Dramaturgy: Christine Börsch-Supan
Space: Emma Critchley, Phillip Staffa
Films and Cinematography: Emma Critchley
Music: Hope - Christine Börsch-Supan, Phillip Staffa, Fabian Hönes, Martin Knorz 
Production Set Design: Jana Wassong
Light: Bianca Kehr, Ben Brandis
Sound: Kilian Brand

A Commissioned Work of Pop-Kultur Festival Berlin funded by Initiative Musik gGmbH with Project funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media (BKM)



emmacritchley.com
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