The Moses Complex

The Moses Complex raises the question of the transformation of the political under media conditions. New laws and new media have always emerged simultaneously since Moses brought the tablets from Sinai. This is linked to the mission of liberating a people: Exodus, exile, migration, camps. A pressing issue is how to deal with strangers and the violence that is preserved in cultural techniques but always resurfaces in times of crisis. In 1974, Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet adapted the opera "Moses und Aron," which Arnold Schoenberg had been working on since the late twenties while heading into exile. The film and the opera create undirected spaces, challenging the act of seeing and hearing "before the law." In doing so, they have embedded political resistance into the music and film discourse of the 20th century. At the same time, they create a model for communication.