stone/metall
Welcome!
to the
stone/metal element performance!
Doi, Julian, Vakho, Volker and Ferenc
STONE/METAL by Vakho Kharebava
I have chosen stone/metal as my element because of two reasons. Firstly, I can understand and connect to the certain qualities of it such as steadiness and justice (according to Korean five elements theory). And secondly I associate stones with rocks and mountains, which remind me of my homeland Georgia in the South Caucasus. This feeling of missing homeland is one of the main emotional components — also due to the covid-restriction, I was not visiting this land for more than two years.
As a musician, my approach was first composing the music for the performance. I started with a closing theme, which was an inspiration for this moment. Then I found an opening theme, which is a Georgian folk song „Tushuri“, connecting to my feeling of missing homeland. Next we collected Ideas in a group while listening to the opening theme. Inspired by that I've cut a video of the Intro. Doi Park and Julian Park helped me to bring the ideas into a story. Volker Kehl produced the electronic and drum sounds and supported the improvised live parts of the performance. The members of the group were keeping on suggesting new ideas, which I was trying to integrate into a story. I would describe it as gluing many grains of sand (in this case artistic ideas) together into a big heavy stone (in this case the story).
The main tool for that was still cutting and editing the video, which has become a guideline or visual storyline of our live-streaming. On one day, Volker Kehl has written a small (hi-)story about how we worked together so far. I was inspired by that and wrote a fairy tale about the stone’s journey which in addition to the video became a verbal storyline spoken by Ferenc Kréti.
The storyline of the performance begins with a stone awakening into a person, embodied by Ferenc Kréti, who goes on journey to meet the other elements and finally decides to fly away. In the journey of the stone, we play with the space of the pool, trying to create an illusion of a vast space. This reminds me of landscapes opening from the pick of the mountain or of a bird’s-eye view.
As a result, we have a performance using partly pre-produced video-clips and audio tracks combined with live action. We stream this mixture of pre-produced and live material to the audience letting them guess, what happens live right now and what was recorded beforehand.
You can also find the the fairy tale of the stone by clicking on the tile picture above.