Filiseti Mekidesi (In Search of Sanctuary)

The words “Filiseti” and “Mekidesi” mean shelter and migration in the Amharic language spoken in Ethiopia and Eritrea – where humanity is supposed to have originated. Migration and the search for places of shelter are integral aspects not only of human existence since its very beginnings. All creatures share these experiences: they all seek a safe place of shelter. The migration of populations is a regularly repeated process that is part of our make-up, helping civilizations to spread and develop. However, the origins of migration are rarely benign: it is usually the result of danger, expulsion, suffering or poverty. Immigrants are seldom welcomed and given a friendly reception; they can be repelled or even killed, but they can also put established populations under pressure and force them to move on.

Filiseti Mekidesi is a meditation on the search for a safe, neutral place free from danger. Filiseti Mekidesi does not tell a linear narrative. The work uses musical and poetic means to reflect moments and situations which have taken place in the course of the story or which are currently taking place with particular urgency. Filiseti Mekidesi offers neither analysis nor solutions: it is an audio-visual reflection and a psycho-acoustic observation station that is both an opera and an installation. The venue offers a range of spaces for actions and processes. Audiences are invited to wander around, to explore different sites with small performances or electronically-produced sound “shadows”. The Musikfabrik is joined by Voxnova Italia and the Palestinian singer Kamilya Jubran.

For Elliott Sharp as one of the outstanding protagonists of contemporary American music, forms of composition and performance come into effect that typify his work: combinational streams, chains and loops of musical “molecules”, chaotic structures out of which resonant rhythmic patterns grow, counterpoints of timbre, melodies formed from overtones and extended playing techniques to generate new virtual “instruments”. Multi-perspectival video images establish connections between sounds and visual action. Almost one hundred years after the spatial composition ‘Universe Symphony’, with ‘Filiseti Mekidesi’ Elliot Sharp creates an opera installation that links back to the visionary fragment of Charles Ives’ “universal symphony” at the beginning of the Ruhrtriennale 2018. Two musical works that leave conventional frameworks far behind them, taking us beyond the boundaries of space and time and bracketing the entire programme.

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