CONNECT – The Audience as Artist

›CONNECT – the audience as artist‹ was initiated by the Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne in 2016 in order to question and actively dissolve the traditional separation between audiences and performers. At the heart of the project lies the idea of viewing the audience as an essential element of any performance: new works are purposefully conceived in such a way that the listeners become performers themselves, helping to shape artistic processes. For the project’s fourth round, a work was commissioned from Brigitta Muntendorf by the five partner ensembles of ›CONNECT‹ (Ensemble Modern, London Sinfonietta, Het Muziek, Remix Ensemble Casa da Música, Ensemble intercontemporain). She is a composer and professor of composition at the Cologne Academy of Music and Dance and has been artistic director of the KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen since 2025. In her work, she explores the fragility of our techno-social and sociopolitical present times, developing concepts such as radical listening, environmental storytelling and immersive theatre. She also established the term social composing, radically focusing on the communicative capabilities of music. With Ensemble Modern, her most recent project was the experimental musical theatre show ›MELENCOLIA‹. Ensemble Modern will give the world premiere of the commission for ›CONNECT‹, which is entitled ›Last Show‹, at the Donaueschingen Music Days on October 17, 2026. Further performances by the partner ensembles will follow. Ensemble Modern asked Brigitta Muntendorf these ten questions about this extraordinary project.

The project ›CONNECT – the audience as artist‹ blurs the boundaries between performers and listeners. What does that mean for your role as a composer? Which element of the project interested you?

I am interested in people who listen and dedicate themselves to the act of hearing for the moment of a performance or a concert. What unites these very different people in this moment? Especially today, in our fragile present time, when loudness simply drowns out nuance and ambivalence. Without listening, there is no music. ›Last Show‹ is about the audience – this group of defiant people. Who are they, what do they have in common, what are their differences, and how can self-reflection be shared in a concert?

Are you working with the five ensembles during the composition process? And if so, how?

There were many conversations in advance, and we discussed various phases of the work’s genesis. The fact alone that the piece will be performed by different ensembles in different locations means that you need a shared understanding of possibilities. In preliminary try-outs with Ensemble Modern’s musicians, for example, we’ve already worked on drum rolls which can have very different meanings, depending on the context, and tuning in to the monstrous elements in the music.

In addition to exchange with the ensembles, the main focus is on communication and interaction with the audience. How is the audience involved in the onstage action?

I am trying to make the audience visible as a kind of social sculpture. How can the concert hall become a place where we grapple with ourselves? At a time when the public is instrumentalized as much as it is entertained by displays of staged politics, I want to know what resistance the concert space offers. In concrete, this means that we will question the audience in an artistic and dramaturgically purposeful way, about affiliations, social roles and influences, and this will be initiated in parallel with the music, with and by the music, using voting tools – and at the same time, the concert situation itself will be questioned.

How do you prepare the audience?

There will only be a technical explanation how to use the voting tool; this will take place inside the concert hall itself.

How much can the audience influence the work? What is the ratio between predetermined elements and those the audience may influence?

The results of the voting tool will be evaluated and projected live. This immediacy can trigger dynamics within the audience, since the collective results always also affect the individual. Music and questioning follow different dramaturgies, but are intertwined and meet at fictional, unexpected turns. The point is to turn the internal world outside while also making mechanisms of influence and manipulation visible. I don’t want an audience that just takes on roles; instead, I want to place the role of the audience at the centre of events.

How do you deal with the factor of the unknown – the unpredictability of the audience?

Every reaction reflects the audience. Of course people can refuse to give answers using their smartphones. But there will always also be some who share their answers and others who think about the questions posed. What I find especially intriguing about this project is that the different ensembles involved mean there are also different audiences. The goal is that the audience in any given place can view the voting results of previous performances elsewhere, so that the listeners meet, in a way, between one performance location and the others.

What would happen if the audience refused to interact?

I can understand people in the audience not wanting to sing, not wanting to play instruments or not wanting to join in any other musical activity – I myself would not want to do that either. Responding to questions, on the other hand, requires no visibility. It’s anonymous, and therefore a chance to open various stages of inner reflection, starting with the here and now. Perhaps the anonymity, however, will also be used to purposefully distort the results – that too is a reality we are confronted with every day. If the audience refuses altogether, the piece will still take place – the music will resound, the questions will be asked. The audience would be using its power of resistance against itself – by showing no curiosity about itself. Albert Camus once said: true unhappiness begins when people cease to care about each other. Then again, perhaps the ›Last Show‹ is the true unhappiness that Camus mentioned, and the audience has a common destiny?

Your piece will be performed in five Eu ropean cities. Do you think that because of different cultural backgrounds and listening experiences, the audiences will also act and react differently?

Yes, I do assume that. Not only have the traditions of contemporary music, and therefore current production, taken different paths in Germany, England, France, Portugal and the Netherlands, but the context of the presentation is different in each case. In Donaueschingen, there will be an audience of experts first and foremost, while ›Last Show‹ will be performed in London for a rather mixed audience. In both places, the question will be how large the willingness is to engage with what might be an unfamiliar concert experience.

What do you expect of the performances? Are they different from those of a conventional concert?

I don’t expect a certain result. And that is what is so different – and feels right – about this format. Any participation or non-participation, every answer or non-answer reflects the mental state of the audience right now. Of course I hope that people will be willing to use this space for joint self-reflection. In principle, I think participation is an inner, not an external act – and this reversal, from internal to external, interests me. And then there is always the music: it conveys our thoughts; that is immanent in music.

How important is social media for this project?

New media always play a role in my work, not just social media, but also new technologies. The point is to reflect upon them and to question them critically, sometimes involving them, sometimes not. Social media sharpens and evokes many dynamics that make us feel insecure, contributing to tensions mounting and polarization within society. These polarizations, and thus all the visualizing of tensions already existing within the audience, will play a central role.