Von der Vermessung des Schlafes (On the Survey of Sleep) is an interdisciplinary concert project about a state shared by all human beings – yet experienced in profoundly different ways. Moving between retreat and control, exhaustion and imagination, the evening offers a multi-layered perspective on sleep as a cultural, social and political phenomenon.

Together with Ruth Velten and the Ensemble LUX:NM, composer Peter Gahn and concert designer Anselm Dalferth develop a musical-performative dramaturgy that makes the tensions between individual bodily rhythms, societal pressure to perform, and constant availability both audible and tangible. Drawing on developments since industrialization, the project connects historical perspectives with current discourses as well as alternative forms of knowledge from art, literature, and everyday culture. In doing so, the project ranges from the “right to laziness” to the idea of human beings as a resource that must be available at all times. Various musical works enter into dialogue with a new composition by Peter Gahn, inspired by scientific research. The result is a concert evening that explores sleep as a realm of experience – a state in which body, society, and time intersect in unexpected ways.

With kind support from the Deutschen Stiftung Schlaf, through scientific advisory input, and thanks to their mediation and facilitation of the collaboration with the research institute Advanced Sleep Research GmbH (ASR) and the piano manufacturer Steingraeber & Söhne.