Semibreve 2024: Carmen Villain + Saint Abdullah, Eomac & Rebecca Salvadori

The Living Monument is a dance performance by the Hungarian choreographer Eszter Salamon, composed of living tableaux in which the dancers move almost imperceptibly, as if suspended in a state of a motoric vigil, between the static and super-slow motion. In a world premiere live performance, Carmen Villain’s music for the piece uses this apparent immobility as a score, creating a fantastic ambience that evokes a world of slowness, in permanent tension, yet without any sign of rigidity or staticity. Viewed from a different perspective, this piece seems to be the perfect continuation of Villain’s gradual approximation to the ambiental genre in her recent works, which reveal a change of pace into more abstract, unseen and challenging territories. Over the last ten years, Carmen Villain’s path has been a prolific artistic journey, establishing a curious parallel to the long line running between Mexico and Norway in her blood.

Saint Abdullah, Eomac & Rebecca Salvadori
present A Forbidden Distance
 
Main Room 4:30 PM 

In the second chapter of The Crossing — the first is Białowieża by Chris Watson and Izabela Dłużyk, also a part of this edition of Semibreve — we return to the notion of border. In particular to its political aspects, as an arbitrary division of a territory that creates an impenetrable line of demarcation. What stories can these spaces and their supposed impenetrability tell us? What fears haunt those who try to survive? A Forbidden Distance poses the questions on the meaning of an individual’s life when faced with the need to move, forced into the nomadic currents of our times. The audio-visual project itself is an example of collaboration that transcends borders and nationalities — brothers Mohammed and Mehdi Mehrabani-Yeganeh (Saint Abdullah) are Iranian-Canadian, Ian McDonnel (Eomac) is Irish, and London-based filmmaker Rebecca Salvadori is Italian-Australian — all working together for the first time.
 
A Forbidden Distance is part of The Crossing, the first artistic creation of the TIMES project, commissioned by Semibreve, Berlin Atonal, Unsound e Sónar.