VIKARË

Vikarë 

Archaic Roundel in Two Space-Times

for three actors, one singer, ensemble, electronics and projections

Delirium Ensemble 15.0

Conductor, artistic direction, production – Wiktor Kociuban

Composition, conceptual development, stage installations – Demetre Gamsachurdia

Visual projections – Ivo Reis

Vikarë (the Etruscan name of “Icarus”) is a two-hour interactive opera that combines music and theatre through stage installations and visual projections.

Eleven pictures, fifteen musicians, three actors, one singer, three short films, four animations, nine tapes, two spacetimes, one sun, two storylines, six scenic installations, four rituals, one conductor as pilot, three non-existent figures, two voice generators, one sacral family as solar constellation, two researchers, one flying machine in test phase, two border crossers, three duels, twelve meditations, thirty-nine eruptions, no mercy, one ensemble.

With music being the centre of it all, it is about a dialogue of extremes.

Ancient times meet the futuristic new. Etruscan rituals polarise with thought laboratories under particle bombardment. Living people – standing, walking and sitting – alternate with data and instructions from digital personalities. Timeless spaces of infinite silence are replaced by the tremendous noise of an industrial, short-tempered world.

Based on Pythagorean tuning with A = 432hz, different frequencies and sounds are created that are not only acoustically but also often physically perceptible. Organised mostly in loops, the music moves between extreme gestural outbursts and subtle, precise micro-interval sequences. A special kind of extreme “connectivity” creates real and illusory soundscapes into which the listener can zoom in and out.

There is no acting on the stage in the traditional sense. The characters are following certain principles and patterns. Particular moments are selected, and music and scenic action alike plunge into a „rabbit hole“ of those moments. The content of “Vikarë” is thus a combination of the nature, emotions and characteristics of these musical moments encountered in the rabbit hole. 

Vegoia draws endless circles while Tarchon controls the space as a resting pillar, and Vikarë unleashes all the powers at his disposal to touch the sun in a hallucinatory journey in order to attain complete annihilation, for within the Etruscan world full of bliss and harmony there is no place for him left.

In another time and world, Leonardo (inspired by Leonardo da Vinci) investigates the very human dream of flying which finds its expression in his new flying machine. Antoine (inspired by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry) who wants to break out of a confusing world of illusions gathers all his courage and dares a test flight with Leonardo’s flying object. Marie (inspired by Maria Sklodowska Curie), witness to the dangers of technological novelty, commemorates the failed pilot.