With Biberdamm - Assut I bring together instinct and culture. On video, three beavers grind wheat in a continuous loop, performing a collective precise, steady stamp-milling technique. On stage, three live musicians mirror this structure through a hocket-based score, each playing a single note in turn. The music unfolds gradually, reiterative and slowly shifting. At a later stage, the performers use PET bottles full of water used as flutes, producing glissandi by the movement of water inside them. In this gesture, water conceptually moves from the beavers’ habitat into human musical practice, transformed from environment into sound.

The work engages a therianthropic dimension: a space in which human and animal modes of being reflect one another without merging. The beavers assume organized, almost industrial labor; the musicians perform patterns that resemble instinctive alternation. Their relationship recalls the logic of the nahual — a correspondence or shared structure rather than imitation — where identities remain distinct yet interconnected.

Therianthropy also appears today as a contemporary social phenomenon in so-called “therians,” individuals who experience a deep identification with non-human animals. Without literal transformation, my piece resonates with this condition by suggesting that instinct and culture are not opposites, but intertwined layers within human experience.

The title reflects this layered exchange. “Dam” refers to the water structures built by beavers, reshaping landscapes and creating habitable space. “Assut,” an Arabic term for small natural river bays, evokes areas where movement slows, gathers, and transforms. In image and sound, the piece traces these processes across bodies, materials, and environments.

Score, page 5