musical sales

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The presentation of vacation house takes the form of a musical. Located at the offices of a real estate agency Engel & Völkers in Basel, with part of the staff in their working environment, the event includes the opera singer Ricardo Frenzel Baudisch. The performance takes the form of a sales pitch—the libretto was written in collaboration with Julien Bismuth—the standard language of a business proposal with a description of the house—its specific location, properties and amenities, similar to the protocol I produce for all the houses. The song consists of individual short sections, always beginning with the direct contact with a potential customer. The musical score︎ was written by the French musician and composer Augustin Maurs︎,  whom previously collaborated on the record statement house.
        The musical performance extends the project of combining elements from architecture, sculpture, and the performative, transforming the inhabitants from earlier projects into an active presenter-doubling perhaps as interpreter, author figure, and spokesperson for the house. The event draws on the narrative tradition of the French musical, exemplified by the 1964 classic “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg”.
        The house presented in the course of the musical performance is entitled vacation house—described as a distant place, the house is said to both be a site of vacation as well as a site on vacation from us.