Performance of PARA BELLUM | Peter Kutin

In this live performance of PARA BELLUM, composer Peter Kutin transforms the Tank Hall of Vienna's Museum of Military History into a haunting audiovisual experience. The performance features the vocalist Omid Darvish and violinist Anna Lindenbaum.

Precisely choreographed LED lights sweep across the hall's massive historic tanks, reducing them to flickering silhouettes. Their shadows stretch and dissolve across the walls, while ever-shifting soundscapes reshape the space around the audience. The effect is disorienting and dreamlike: a shadowy noise ballet, an obscure marche funèbre.

For decades, war in Central Europe felt like something fit only for museum display. PARA BELLUM quietly unsettles that assumption, using light and sound to challenge our perception of a future we thought we had left behind. Following recent works including Unstable Horizon / Warface (2024) and Skyfall (2026), as well as his score for the documentary Militantropos, which premiered at Cannes in 2025, the installation marks a renewed engagement by Kutin with the topic of war, destruction and human failure.

This performance was part of the 2026 Vienna Digital Cultures festival, which explored how technology shapes perception and power in times of conflict.