MEDIATHEK

Stories of unnameable hunts: not metaphors, but concrete historical phenomena, hateful old habits according to which some men have become predators of other men and, even in the twentieth century, have soaked the soil of Europe with the blood of millions of people: so much its civil heart as its vast and beautiful forests, reaching as far as its mountainous borders. Mourners who no longer want to be hunters and, in front of the resurfaced memory of the victims, complain the burden of guilt for the bloody hunting.

The Caucasus — easternmost limit of Europe, natural boundary, Mountain of Languages (as it is sometimes known), inextricable tangle of ethnic groups, maze marking and confounding the boundaries at one and the same time — rises as the epicentre of memory and turns into a mythical place of this judgment. The theatrical form chosen for this creation of ours is the tragic chorus where singing and music, gesture and totemic vision are closely intertwined.

A small community of women and men of various ages shoot their voice-darts in between a jolt to the heart a lament and a dream. The chorus includes a singer of Armenian origin. She is a traditional custodian of an ancient and vast musical heritage, and living memory of a people who was wounded by an unforgotten — yet often shamefully ignored — genocide.

As on the wide central screen the victim’s manifold face gradually emerges, on the two LCD side screens, a struggle unfolds between two Nazi officers, each championing opposing views of life. L.I., Lingua Imperii, is the language of the empire meant as coercive domination. It is the poor, brutish, deceitful language of the Nazi propaganda. It is the alphabets and the languages taught by force. But it is also a gag imposed as a violent gift by the rulers. Ultimately, it is the very language of violence.