MIME

MCB-TV-12683

CHORNOBYLDORF. Archaeological opera

The world of Chornobyldorf is dedicated to the research on imaginary culturological post-apocalypse. CHORNOBYLDORF as “opera aperta” (a term coined by Umberto Eco) combines an archaeological opera (music-theatrical performance) in seven novels with a multiple and open-ended finale, a series of video performances created during expeditions through post-industrial landscapes, two fictional Institutions: Anthropological museum of CHORNOBYLDORF, and Institute of Chornobyldorf culture, and a real virtuality opera — a virtual space that blends all physical, video, and textual elements of the project online.

Work on the opera began with an expedition to Zwentendorf, a town on the Danube 50 kilometres west of Vienna. Built here in 1978, the powerful nuclear power was never launched due to mass protests by environmentalists and a national referendum. Eight years later, in 1986, a nuclear catastrophe struck in Ukrainian Polissia, and Chornobyl became the great divide of the world and human history.

ARTISTIC SYNOPSIS:

the descendants of humanity who survived in a series of disasters,

find themselves in a post-society,

the world after the death of capitalism, opera, and philosophy.

wandering among the ruins of the nuclear power plants, abandoned churches, theaters, and galleries,

they try to recreate the lost civilization through the archeological performances-rituals.

universal symbols and signs,

which are again misinterpreted,

gradually dissolve in a white noise of nature