Archive: Ira Melkonyan and the rubberbodies collective
Krems Stadtsaal Stadtsaal
Upstairs Geology 50/50
© Thomas Lenden
Program text
PERFORMANCE
An installation that seems like a fusion of an artist studio and a laboratory: But slowly a sequence of mysterious events are set in motion. Fragilely suspended plastic bags filled with coloured liquids tilt and burst. There’s trickling and burbling. On slanted surfaces the liquids turn into viscous rivulets, which flow according to the law of gravity but refuse prescribed tracks. They seem to have their own will.
The performance artist Ira Melkonyan holds master's degree in microbiology. She confronts liquids with the human tactic of dramaturgy. Together with the rubberbodies collective, she navigates the soundsupported happenings, while leaving the directing to non-human actors. The audience is fascinated by a type of mechanical machine that seems to have no purpose. It leaks like nature into the Anthropocene, whose glaciers and polar ice are melting away.
Concept and creation: Ira Melkonyan
Singer, performer: Irene Sorozabal Moreno
Co-creation, production design, and advice: Jimmy Grima
Architectural development and design: Dominykas Savickas
Dramaturgical advice: Maria Rößler
Installation assistant: Matthew Micallef
Music excerpts from “Ordo Virtutum” by Hildegard of Bingen Supported by DAS Theatre, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
A production by the rubberbodies collective, Malta
