After the pandemic, everything seemed frozen, stuck, exhausted. The Viennese saxophoniste Sophie Hassfurther felt an urge to break this condition apart and reassemble it, like a kaleidoscope: shapes and colors shift into one another, forming new patterns and structures, to gain a different perspec tive, a new sense of place. During this period, she was influenced by authors such as bell hooks (All About Love) and Brené Brown (The Gifts of Imperfection). The gift of imperfection: the junctures, the fractures where something new emerges, or possibly emerges. She was also influenced by Harriet Lerner’s ideas about personal identity, which is never fixed or detached but continually reshaped through interaction.

Maxi Broecking