Do we become who we are in the gaze of the other? This philosophical question is the driving force behind Myrtó Nizami’s Prima Materia project. She concludes her two-year stint as composer-in-residence of Festival Dag in de Branding with this final presentation. Working closely with soprano and performer Kristia Michael, Ensemble Modelo62, audio engineer Siavash Jafari and video artist Luca Tornato Serafini, Nizami undertakes an ingenious journey into the subconscious, with Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa as her guide. Behind every mask is a new mask, says Pessoa in his Sonnet VIII. Who am I really, if my identity is a matryoshka doll?
In previous editions of Dag in de Branding, Nizami showed intriguing intermediate results of her quest. Not all of that material returns in this final work; for example, nothing will be heard tonight from a composition based on Pessoa’s poem from June last year: “The same source, but a different piece,” she says about it: “It was an important step in the development of the project, but since then it has taken on a different form.”
The two scenes she presented in the edition of last March have been included in their entirety in Prima Materia III, ‘The Last Mask’. In it, Nizami investigated the balance between composition and improvisation, the possibilities of spatial distribution of sound, the distance between performers and audience (how close can you get?) and the contribution of visuals to the musical dramaturgy. All these different aspects return in this final work, to which she has added a completely new third and final scene. The visual presentation has also remained the same, with a centrally positioned bed and long transparent curtains, which also serve as projection screens. The work lasts 24 minutes in total.
Prima Materia III, ‘The Last Mask’ is a chamber opera with one character, who plays two different roles. Performer Kristia Michael is both observer and observed, both scientist and research subject, both narrator and dreamer. Seated on her bed with a mosquito net and projection screen, she descends into her deepest dreams. Each scene focuses on a dream, in which the character takes a step back in time, all the way to childhood, while simultaneously looking at herself. In the last dream, her duality may come to an end – the viewer can fill in the blanks.
Questions of identity are of all times but have taken on new meaning in our current world, in which the ubiquity of technology and media complicates perceptions of ourselves and reality. Constantly viewed and constantly drawing up different facades, we are a fragmentation bomb of ‘selves’ and yet we experience our identity as ‘whole’. ‘The Last Mask’ stages that disparity in a setting that is both a laboratory and a dream sequence.
But Nizami hopes above all that the work is ‘open’ to all kinds of interpretations: “I don’t want to wall it up with themes and ideas. I actually find my own interpretations the least interesting. I think the worst thing would be if someone says afterwards: I didn’t understand it. There is nothing you have to understand, I only create a direction of thought.” In this way, Prima Materia III, ‘The Last Mask’ offers a foundation within which everyone can give free rein to their own imagination.
As a supporting act, ensemble-in-residence SKETCH351 will present itself for the first time at 18:30. SKETCH351 is a musicians’ ensemble dedicated to contemporary music and creation. As maker-in-residence for Dag in de Branding, the group will be presenting a small sample of their Fluxus-inspired playground – a performative original work that encompasses their reflections on the absurdity of daily life.
