On the line connects musicians and listeners at a series of junctures, in temporary formations in which instrument, action, line, word and listening hold potential for negotiation.
The audience is involved in a relational sense of ensemble, where there is perhaps some value in keeping the tension, or even drawing it out – through holding, sustaining, talking, playing, taking part and, not least, listening.
A central moment in the work is a modified reenactment of Alvin Lucier’s Love Songs – a piece that Ensemble KNM worked on directly with Lucier in Berlin. The original Lucier piece’s basic grammar of transfering resonance from one string instrument to another, connected through space by a long metal wire – is here evolved into a multi-player situation. The reenactment is embedded within two contrasting relational textures that both require the participation of some of the audience in order to establish themselves.