Ute Holl

Moses Complex - Freud, Schoenberg, Straub / Huillet Ute Holl

In 1974, Straub and Huillet created their cinematic adaptation of the opera Moses and Aron, which Arnold Schoenberg had written in the twenties and thirties of the 20th century, on his way into exile. Film and opera devise homogeneous aesthetic spaces out of equal elements, thus challenging established hierarchical forms of hearing, seeing, perceiving. They invent forms of perception "before the law," thus introducing resistance into musical and cinematic thinking. Both works propose models of communication for next societies. Against simplistic notions of monotheism and the prohibition of images, Schoenberg and Straub/Huillet realize projects of modernity consisting in incessantly contriving and creating differences. They prompt their audiences to generate resistance in setting primordial distinctions: for instance in distinguishing a voice in an apparent force of noise, as in a burning bush. Based on major works on the figure of Moses, particularly referring to Sigmund Freud, Arnold Schoenberg, as well as to Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet, the book explores the relation of media, migration and politics. Ever since Moses has brought tablets inscribed with commandments from the Sinai, new media and new laws have simultaneously emerged. Freud adds the issue of historiography and memory to the complex. The mission of liberating a people connected to it has been negotiated in different cultural forms. Psychoanalysis, music or cinema have described exodus, exile and encampment as a process of force. This is persisting today in Europe's treatment of foreigners, strangers, or aliens. The works of Freud, Schoenberg and Straub/Huillet engage with the return of violence in times of crisis.