Performance about very young Arabic activist Alia Magda Elmahdy
written by Symon Henry
presented in Stuttgart, Germany,
on the 23.04.13 by the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart during the “What’s happening” event
Program note:
[That my silence will bear at its smallest finger (I have swallowed revolt, taste)]
for solo percussionist
duration: 15-30 minutes
Symon Henry
dedicated to those who raised for a more humane world, from Cairo to Santiago de Chile, passing by Montréal as well as to Krystina Marcoux, percussionist
Nudity as revolt. The body of a human being, not as merchandise or object, but as a projection of a “That’s enough!”;
as a place from which the sacred character belongs only to oneself;
as a place of tension between the one looking and the one looked, the occupying and the occupied.
The body of a musician, exposed/unveiled in a performance.
Point of departure: Egyptian activist Alia Magda Ehmahdy, naked against the salafists. Point of departure: the Arabic spring extended to the country of origin of my father.
Point of departure: a mixed-bread composer Quebecois/Coptic agnostic in front of a musician’s body which movements in time and space create meaning.
The project: a fifteen minutes performance, maximum thirty, involving a percussionist.
(…)
Connecting thread: music and theatricality.
Connecting thread: the setting in motion of a musician’s body giving birth to a poetical universe centered around the tension between sound and sight.
April 12, 2012 preliminary working notes
Note : « That my silence will bear at its smallest finger » is an extract from a poem by Federico García Lorca (1898-1936).
Kasia Kadłubowska 