For years, my work has engaged with Armenian culture. It is a relationship that has taken different forms over time, through theatre and music works such as Affreschi. Due porte per Tebe, Ordan karmir, 1915 The Armenian Files and Ararat, created with Giacomo Vanelli.
In this solo performance, I work with texts by Sayat-Nova, which I will recite live, together with a sound world built from electronics and clarinet, with some sung passages.I am interested in Armenian culture not as something to be preserved intact or simply brought into the present. It is a culture that has continued to change form: through languages, places, the diaspora, music, poetry, and its relationship with memory. Sayat-Nova himself, writing in several languages and moving across different cultural worlds, belongs to this fluid dimension rather than to any fixed idea of tradition. This is where my work begins. I am not trying to make ancient material contemporary, because it does not need to be updated. I approach it through the tools that belong to me today: voice, singing, clarinet, electronics. It is a continuation of a research process that began a long time ago, looking each time for a possible form in which to inhabit this relationship. In this case, Sayat-Nova’s words become a physical and sonic presence: a voice that comes from far away, but is spoken here, now.
– RPD