Armine, Sister

May 8 – 10 h 19:00
Stazione Leopolda – Florence

Armine, Sister is a piece dedicated to Armenian history and culture and to the Armenian genocide.

Originally, Armine, Sister was intended as a séance in which it is not us calling the departed, but the spirits of the dead calling to have a trace of the past revealed, made visible, unearthed. The title recalls the first two words of a letter with no legible address, doomed to drift around in time and space.

In light of the post-Auschwitz future that Theodor W. Adorno envisaged for poetry, art and education, we would like to ask: “Is there a chance that the 21st century will not become the century of ignorance?” In our new piece we ask about Europe, convinced that Europe is a question – one about history, identity, dignity. One of the main ideas of Armine, Sister is to tackle the issue of historic taboos and lies as opposed to a duty to witness.

When working on the performance, we often invoked Paul Celan’s Death Fugue, in which the dreams of the murderers and victims are dreamt in the same space. The space of the performance/séance of memory, like the space of a dream, is co-inhabited by thousands of beings.

Armine, Sister touches on how painful the memory-carrying process can be. It is also an attempt to identify/name our place in relation to past generations, and to understand who we are – we, who always stand on the other side of memory like on the other side of the camera. We see history through a peephole, seeing only traces, shadows, thoughts.

performers/musicians: Davit Baroyan, Ditte Berkeley, Przemysław Błaszczak, Alessandro Curti, Jarosław Fret, Murat Içlinalça, Dengbej Kazo, Aram Kerovpyan, Vahan Kerovpyan, Kamila Klamut, Aleksandra Kotecka, Simona Sala, Orest Sharak, Mahsa Vahdat, Marjan Vahdat, Tomasz Wierzbowski
modal song studio led by: Aram Kerovpyan
vocal collaboration: Virginia Pattie Kerovpyan
sets built by a team led by Piotr Jacyk: Maciej Mądry, Krzysztof Nawój, Paweł Nowak, Bartosz Radziszewski, Andrzej Walada
lighting: Maciej Mądry
project coordination: Magdalena Mądra
musical dramaturgy, installation, direction: Jarosław Fret
project cofinanced by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland

Cultivating an ethos of ensemble work, Teatr ZAR develops its artistic projects through long-term research into source material while creating a new theatrical language drawing on music from various traditions. Teatr ZAR is a multinational ensemble that was formed during annual research expeditions to Georgia between 1999 and 2003. During these travels, the group collected musical material, including a core of centuries-old polyphonic songs that have their roots in the beginning of the human era and are probably the oldest forms of polyphony in the world. Performances are just part of a long process of research, expeditions, personal explorations and transformation.