Codeborn

Zara Ali, Komposition, Konzept, Text
Hannah Dübgen, Bühnenfassung, Konzept
Florentine Klepper, Deva Schubert , Regie
Hansjörg Sofka, Musikalische Leitung
Wolfgang Menardi, Set- und Kostümdesign
Julia Spinola, Dramaturgie

 

PHACE
Walter Seebacher, Klarinette
Michael Krenn, Saxophon
Mathilde Hoursiangou, Keyboard
Manuel Alcaraz Clemente, Percussion
Francesco Palmieri, E-Gitarre
Roland Schueler, Cello
Alexandra Dienz, Kontrabass

 

Nontobeko Bhengu, Sopran
Florian Stern, Tenor
Julien Horbatuk, Bariton
Andrea De Majo, Musical, Tänzer, Countertenor

Zara Ali
Codeborn – musc theatre (2025/26, wp)

With Codeborn, Zara Ali unfolds a music theater piece of unsettling relevance. In the fictional world of Benthos, a society is exposed to the power of an artificial intelligence and drawn into an unstoppable process of transformation. Boundaries blur, old orders crumble, virtual spaces promise intimacy and belonging – but the price of this freedom is high. At the center is Guy, a brilliant programmer who recognizes how deeply the state, with the help of so-called Dolls, intervenes in people’s lives, monitoring and manipulating them. When he falls in love with Nur, a virtual apparition of unsettling presence, his perception begins to waver: Between reality and simulation, conformity and resistance, a struggle for self-determination, love, and the question of what human life can still mean in a radically changed world ensues.

Musically, Ali weaves a vibrant soundscape from four solo voices, electronics, and the musicians of Ensemble PHACE: precise, visceral, and highly sensitive in its details. In this way, Codeborn makes this societal upheaval, beyond cultural pessimism and dystopia, immediately audible. A sensual realm of possibility, disturbingly close to our present.

A co-production of the Munich Biennale and the Tyrolean State Theatre Innsbruck, in cooperation with the Bavarian State Opera, Ars Electronica Linz and Klangspuren Schwaz. Commissioned by the City of Munich, the composition and libretto were written for the Munich Biennale.