If there is a Palermo in Stuttgart, then there is a beach in the city. This became true for one summer Sunday afternoon through the collaborative work Sun and Sea by the Lithuanian theatre and film director Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, writer and poet Vaiva Grainytė, and composer and performance artist Lina Lapelytė. Visitors who entered the Palermo Gallery, which is now closed, in Stuttgart on this afternoon in June observed a colorful and melodic beach scene from above.
In the collaborative work of Rugilė Barzdžiukaite, Vaiva Grainytė and Lina Lapelytė special attention is put on the relationship between documentation and fiction, realism and poetry, as well as on the crossover of theatre, music and fine arts.
Sun and Sea is a situation set on a beach. Different type of bodies – in form, shape, and color – embody a model of society put in a holiday mode. Anonymous chunks of flesh wearing informal uniforms observed from the Sun’s perspective. Voices produced by these lazy incognitos touch upon a wider picture: the biography of the Sun and the biography of Sea. A scene built of all kinds of physiques lying side by side appear as a choir, singing in one breath with the overexposed light and heaps of sand.
Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė and Lina Lapelytė have been working on this micro version of the the new opera piece Sun and Sea During their fellowship at the Akademie Schloss Solitude.
The full version of Sun and Sea will premiere at Staatstheater Braunschweig in May 2017.
»As ancient Chinese say:
Rabbit lives in a Moon
Rabbit lives in a MoonThe question falls soon
And who lives in the Sun?And who lives in the Sun?«
»Master and center
Axis and core
It can cause a war
In my field
In my head
In my USB keyIn my pee«
»It tells the leaves turn green and grass go out
It wakes up peacocks and factories
Greats whose who are busy and early
It is the one who grows pigment on my skin
And helps the batteries feel good and full«»Oh sea I see you
Can you see me?«»It’s me
Relaxed
Salty flesh
Tender waves
Full of micro fungus
Sea cabbage networking
My wifi is turned off
But not a magazine
Neither a newspaper
News on disasters«
»Every year
Sunken ships
Serve as a playground for scientists
An estimated half trillion fishes
Lined up end to end
They would reach the sun
And die by crushing in order
To provide food for usAnd who lives in the Sea?
And who lives in the Sea?«
Sunday the 26th of June 2016
Palermo Galerie, Olgastr. 82, Stuttgart
With contributions by: Annik Aicher, Sharlene Bamboat, Petra Czpionka, Sebastian Daeschle, Kunal Joshi, Paula Kohlmann, Dovydas Korba, Nayantara Kotian, Natascha Kuch, Ana Mendes, Saadia Mirza, Maren Pfeiffer, Anne Pflug, Prashant Prakash, Christoph Sökler, Jakob Sökler, Jean-Lorin Sterian, Cristina Vidruțiu, Georg Wirth, Nikolaus Witty and more performers to be confirmed.
In cooperation with: Akademie Schloss Solitude and Palermo Galerie
Special thanks: Martin Bückle, Florian Clewe, Leon Filter, Paula Kohlmann, Simone Rueß, Mike Sperlinger