Quarrtsiluni

Lusorium Berlin (2011)

"To find the holy songs for the new year", you told me, "my ancestors all came together in the ceremonial house of their village. All lights in the house were put out. They were sitting absolutely quietly in the darkness, listening into the deep silence. This silence they called Quarrtsiluni. It describes the act of waiting which is about to come into being.

For my ancestors believed that those holy songs were born in silence, coming from the human mind, as if messages ascending from the depths of the sea."

Quarrtsiluni is a 16-channel spatial radio play as well as a concert. Carmen, the singer, is the protagonist of both. The story starts with a letter she gets from an old Inuit woman telling her, that there are still houses, similar to the ceremonial houses of the Inuit. Hidden in little lanes of the worldly metropolis, they open their gates exclusively to those who know the secret code ... and the Inuit woman entrusts the code to Carmen. She comes to visit one of those secret houses ... it becomes a journey into the depths of her soul.
"Every loss creates an immense noise within us, seeking to drown out the new melody that has arisen from the silence of the soul."

Cast

Conception, screenplay, music & spatial radio play
Lyhrus

Set design & stage building
Annette Meyer & Kristjan Meyer-Dobrinski

Lighting & video titles
Thomas Ploentzke

Eight Performances
Parochialkirche Berlin, 15 April - 7 May 2011

LUMOON – ensemble for nocturnal music
Christiane Mikoleit - vocals
Maximilian Bahr / Jonas Fehrenberg - guitar
Paula Sell - accordeon
Louise Pühn / Katharina Steinbeis - harp
Florian Tippe - bass-clarinet
Lyhrus - keyboards
Guido Großmann - double bass
Catrien Stremme - drums & percussion

Glass harps
Nazli Bagci, Janet Glatzer, Melissa Kuna, Erika Kühn, Lucie Lohse, Benjamin Runge, Sophie Schnider, Berit Stegmann, Fabian Wagner, Tobias Wringe
(Students of the Bertha-von-Suttner-Oberschule Berlin - charge for the group: Erika Kühn)

Live-sound
Martin Offik, Teresa Kunz

Panaural scenes - speakers
Carmen: Stefanie Peyk
Jean: Jean-Jacques Hoffner
La Majuaq: Annie Kleff
Emilio: Tiberio Snaidero
Francesca: Carlotta Gelsomini
Valentina: Eva Sansone
Grandfather: Steffen Raphael Schwarzer
Herr Rudszinski: Dominik Sobacki
Reciter of a Trakl-poem: Torsten Krüger
Turkish pupils:
Nazli Bagci & Tugce Celep
Director of the jury: Muharrem Bagci
Sara: Caterina Snaidero

Controlling 16channel sound installation
Brian Krüger

Translations
Franziska Rowbury, Alexia Lingenheld, Dominik Sobacki, Nazli Bagci, Tiberio Snaidero

Photographs
Gernot Kolberg

Social Media
Alexia Lingenheld

Main rehearsal

– All photos © Gernot Kolberg –

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