borborygmus
Performance at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2019 (© Bobby Rogers)
Performance at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2019 (© Bobby Rogers)
Performance at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2019 (© Bobby Rogers)
Performance at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2019 (© Bobby Rogers)
Performance at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2019 (© Bobby Rogers)
Performance at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2019 (© Bobby Rogers)
Performance at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2019 (© Bobby Rogers)
Poster for the performance at HAU, Berlin (2019)
Performance at the festival A Mil, Santiago de Chile, 2020 (© MLaura Barrio)
Performance at the festival A Mil, Santiago de Chile, 2020 (© MLaura Barrio)
Performance at the festival A Mil, Santiago de Chile, 2020 (© MLaura Barrio)
portrait of the artists by bobby rogers
description
Borborygmus is a play written, directed and performed by Rabih Mroué, Lina Majdalanie and Mazen Kerbaj.
Commissioned by: HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis)
Co-production: Mousonturm (Frankfurt), Wiener Festwochen (Vienna)
Funded by: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Beirut
Supported within the framework of the Alliance of International Production Houses by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media
Borborygmus has been presented at:
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2019)
Hebbel Theater, Berlin (2019)
Mousontorm, Frankfurt (2019)
Vienna Festwochen, Vienna (2019)
Q-teatteri ry / Baltic Circle Festival, Helsinki (2019)
Festival A Mil, Chile (2020)
Festival delle Colline, Torino (2021)
SYNOPSIS
Borborygmus:
1. A gurgling, rumbling, or squeaking noise from the abdomen that is caused by the movement of gas through the bowels
2. A sound indicating shortage or saturation
3. An unintelligible discours
4. An embarrassing – albeit not dangerous – situation
5. A play about all the above and more
While every sequence in Borborygmus has its independent frame, each of them opens a new window on that which follows. The process reminds of how each tale in the Thousand and One Nights is wholly independent and yet the different tales blend together in the delight of imagining a distant time.
In this performance, however, the experience of time, is constantly the present. Each of the 3 performers communicates that experience through the amplified manifestations of sound. No wonder that the sequences unfold from the ticking of chronometers to the thundering of orchestral music: humanity’s unrivaled expression of the art of time. From there on, sounds take on a magical course that blinks and blinds us with light. In this Babel of sounds and lightening, meaning is reduced to mumbling. The holy and the profane become one.
Coming out of tormented guts, Borborygmus does not only document our time on earth, but it spells out the experience of exile and longing devouring all outcasts.
BIOGRAPHIES
Lina Majdalanie is a Lebanese actress, director and playwright. Her recent works include: Do I Know you? (2017), A Drop of Sweat (2015), 33 rpm and a few seconds(2012), Photo-Romance (2009), Appendice (2007), I Had A Dream, Mom (video, 2006), Biokhraphia (2002), and others. She has curated a number of exhibitions, including:Relatively Universal (HAU-Berlin 2017), Beyond Beirut (Mousonturm-Frankfurt, 2016), Vues (Kunsthalle-Mulhouse, 2015) and Motion-Less (Tanzquartier-Vienna, 2009). She taught at HEAD, Geneva; DasArts, Amsterdam; and Goethe University, Frankfurt. Majdalanie was a member of Home Workspace Curricular Committee-Ashkal Alwan (Beirut, 2010-14), and a fellow at the International Research Center: Interweaving Performance Cultures, Freie Universität, Berlin (2009-10). She adopted the pseudonym Lina Majdalanie in April 2015.
Mazen Kerbaj (b. 1975, Beirut; currently lives in Berlin) is a Lebanese visual artist, musician and comics artist. He is considered one of the initiators and key figures of the Lebanese free improvisation and experimental music scene. Kerbaj is a co-founder of Irtijal, an annual improvisation music festival, and of Al Maslakh, the first label for experimental music in the region. As a trumpet player, Kerbaj pushes the sonic boundaries of his instrument, forging a singular sound and innovative musical language. Since 2000 he has performed in numerous solo and group performances across the Middle East, Europe, Canada and the U.S. Kerbaj is the author of more than fifteen graphic books, and many short stories published in local and international anthologies, newspapers and magazines. His visual artwork has been shown in galleries, museums and art fairs around the world. He was a guest of the DAAD Artists in Berlin Program in 2015.
Rabih Mroué (b. 1967, Beirut; currently lives in Berlin) is a theatre director, actor, visual artist and playwright. Rooted in theatre, his visual work includes videos, drawings, and installations which often incorporates photography and text. Mroué is a contributing editor for The Drama Review (TDR) and a cofounder of the Beirut Art Center (BAC). He is also an associate theatre director at Kammerspiele Munich. Mruoé has performed and exhibited internationally, including at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2015); SALT Galata and SALT Beyoğlu, Istanbul (2014); CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid (2012–13); dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel (2012); ICP Triennial of Photography and Video, International Center of Photography, New York (2010); and Centre Pompidou, Paris (2007), among others. He was a fellow at the International Research Center: Interweaving Performance Cultures, Freie Universität, Berlin (2012–14).
trailer
CONVERSATION WITH THE ARTISTS
Press
Excerpts
From Andre Lepecki: Testimony for the Living (Or: Metabolic Theater)
A relentless, as well as surreally tragicomic, epitaph for the absurdity of human life in this planet, at the cusp of the 21st century.
Metabolism as destiny’s only force, as “justice of the stomach.” Everything else is mere theater.
A whole cavernous world in autophagia, consuming even time itself. Metronomic pulse: gone. Cardiac pulse: fully present. Nervous system: overspilling. Gut wrenching, we are left to witness the uncanny rumbling of endless impersonal metabolic processes, the underbelly of our shared history, the impersonal force of destiny.
From Inga Dreyer: Borborygmus : Im Verdauungstrakt des Lebens
Borborygmus ist eine rhythmische, lakonische und tiefgründige Abhandlung über das Menschsein und die zwischenmenschlichen Beziehungen, in der die Betrachter aufgefordert sind, mit den Sprachfragmenten, Bildern und Klängen zu arbeiten und einen Bogen zu ihren eigenen Erfahrungen zu schlagen.
Die Klänge und Fragen von Borborygmus werden wohl noch lange in den Gedanken und Gefühlen nachhallen.
From Wolfgang Huber-Lang : Verlust und Verdauung: “Borborygmus”
Drei Schauspieler sprechen auf Notenständern liegende arabische Texte. Sie werfen die Blätter zu Boden, bücken sich später danach, zerknüllen sie und werfen sie erneut weg. Doch die Papierknäuel erwachen zu Eigenleben und beginnen ein surrendes, kreisendes Ballett. Von magischen Momenten wie diesen lebt das Theater. Das Festwochen-Gastspiel “Borborygmus” faszinierte gestern im Theater Akzent.
So düster “Borborygmus” wirkt, so viel Zuversicht vermittelt das Stück dennoch. Denn so widrig auch die Umstände sein mögen. Letztlich liegt alles in unserer eigenen Hand: Das Leben und die Kunst.
From Rodrigo Karmy Bolton : El discurso fascista
En Borborygmus, se expone una escena que expone el discurso fascista: un hombre lee un texto que repite sin parar en lo que repite mientras el texto se convierte en un ticket de supermercado. Podría ser un islamista fanático o un empresario que cuenta sus beneficios. La axiomática capitalista no tiene contenido. El fascismo es, pues, su discurso más decisivo, el que gobierna los cuerpos y profana automáticamente los discursos, el que los "territorializa" para separarlos del mundo e impedir las relaciones con los demás y hacer imposible compartir nada.
A folder with selected press can be downloaded here.