Butterfly effect and the idea of Silk
Many people have asked us in the passed months why we mention and play with the Silk metaphor and what this idea has to do with classical music and the Silk Road. Frannie Lèautier used the wonderful comparison of the well known Butterfly effect:
In The Vocation of Man (1800), Fichte says that "you could not remove a single grain of sand from its place without thereby ... changing something throughout all parts of the immeasurable whole".
If we look at the world and connect our life as musicians with the reality of these places in a concrete geographical zone or a school in Neukölln in Berlin, then the idea of 'sharing a piece of silk' or a simple question like 'How would you compose a Silk Road?' gets a completely different dimension because the answer has a direct impact f.e in a school with 98% migration background as in the Ernst-Abbe Gymnasium. In a school like this, many students have a 'Silk Road' background and at the same time they are fully socialized and integrated in a German and European environment. If they discover musicians who include them in their rehearsal process, recognizing, that this orchestra represents a background of basic human qualities, then they suddenly listen with completely different quality of attention because they see, that they have the chance to be part of a reflective and creative process where their role as listeners gets a new quality and their cultural background is suddenly part of a global context where they can rely in an interactive way because digital media as Facebook, You Tube, Snapchat and Twitter is part of their life and world perception. The same applies to audiences in geographical zones like defined at the Silk Road Cultural Belt. If we imagine a global audience which gets involved through digital media, then the idea of the butterfly effect gets a different meaning because the fact, that someone in Buenos Aires is imagining a desert in Turkmenistan as a place of classical music might have the impact, that beside many differences there are basic human qualities which people at the 'Conference of the Birds' want to share with these regions. And this inclusive approach can have a different impact then a purely logical approach. Imagination can lead to new ideas, to new projects and to new visions for a stigmatized geographic zone, not considered as a part of the so called classical or civilized music world. Who wants to perform in Dushanbe ? Are we aware of the great Opera, Norman Foster builded inside a Pyramide in Astana or do we know about the Theater in Zhuhai in China already ? The other question could be, to ask each other: 'How would you compose a Silk Road?' discovering composers we never heard of, learning from each other and creating conditions in music making we maybe never thought of before.
We trust in the butterfly effect and have experienced already the positive impact in many different ways.
Share a piece of Silk. Share your idea of quality - you never know who will discover your source of inspiration and suddenly - someone at Carnegie Hall in New York or a student in a school in Berlin might decide to ask different questions about Silk and it's many possible meanings.
CALLIAS FOUNDATION
