lamentopos

Describe your idea and concept of your work in relation to the festival outlines:

Lamentopos

The Lament Chorus ­ is a performance by the Artgroup ­
Dithyrimbaud ­

It should take place as an intervention in different public
locations (topi).

The Lament translates feelings of pain, loss and mourning, that especially in former Yugoslavia follow the traces of violence and forced separation. This intervention tries to find those places, where the inscribed history of the public places, during the forced separation, surfaces.

What kind of communication approach do you use?

The lamenting voice of the male performer, combines free vocal expression with a verbatim collage as a spontaneous reaction to the public sphere and fills the streets with ranges of sound from mumbling to crying etc. This project is dialogical in the sense that it connects performance art, video art and video installation while relating to the people on location, with the tradition of ancient greek drama.

What are in your opinion concrete benefits to the society because of your communication?

Translating the idea of the Chorus in greek Tragedy via a minimalistic way into the performance of one single artist, recorded on video with sound. It evolves on the intersection of historic political meaning and marks the absurdity of pain inflicted in the individual in a gesture that derives from the universal meaning of greek tragedy.

What did you personally learn from creating your submitted work?

The performer is masked and disguised, referencing contemporary people and the universal, symbolic gesture of the greek chorus. These personifications represent everyday people such as business men, graffiti artists and widows, but also metaphorical beings such as death and war. It should convey a certain strangeness and desperate singularity.

Why is your work, GOOD communication WORK?

In modern western society the public expression of extreme emotion, lamenting, crying out loud over a tragic loss is not that common anymore, although it is generally an archaic ritual of catharsis, as we find it in the classical periods in egypt or greece but also in the slavic or gaelic world as chaoineadh and also even in modern times as in the metier of the moirologists.

but in the end you are always alone, its always the individual grieve that is felt, so that is represented by the male performer, the helplessness and tragedy of the circumstances that reflect in the single being.

Where and how do you intent do implement your work?

as written above - mostly in the public sphere

Did your intervention had an effect on other Media. If yes, describe the effect? (Has other media reported on it- how? Were you able to change other media with your work- how?)

The result of the intervention is then edited on spot and a collage of video images and sound originates. (Duration 12 min. for presentation). Especially the different layers of sound from each single performance should create a multiple layer of twelve voices in the final outcome, like a chorus, although consisting only of one person..