Mnemosyne - Theatre of Memories is the theatre-installation project conceived by Sonja Lebos and AIIR that will be presented in 2011. It is inspired by the work of Croatian writer Eva Grlic and Czech writer Lenka Reinerová, who both are perceived as the representants of the human will to survive even under the most horrible circumstances of the WWII, then after sparkle of freedom again under communist regimes, of the strength to testify about the darkest moments of terror of the XX.Ct. and ability to convey the irresistible descriptions of European and world cities between the two world wars as well the mid-European culture of the time that is still alive and present in the testimonies of those who found the words to describe it to us. The possibility to imagine and re-imagine past opens itself as the plausible way to examine options for future.
At the present moment, the message of compassion, importance of friendship, resistance of an individual against totalitarian oppression and dictatorship is needed as much as ever, to forge the idea of common European cultural space and the huge responsibility which that space has towards the global society where so many people live in the conditions which are below the level of human dignity.
"When I, then already over 70, instead of expected and deserved peace, had to face another terrifying war of unforeseeable consequences on the soil of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, in advance of assaulting new mass war tragedies, I tried…to take away from oblivion all those things which we had to live through during and after the WWII.
Historical and political events I mentioned only briefly, as I experienced them myself, and, if they shook or altered, sometimes fundamentally, the further flow of mine and many other lives.
I believe that many people have lived through the same events, and remembered them in a completely different way. Our subjective remembrance is somehow like Rashomon. Everyone can have his or her own version despite irrefutable facts. Nonetheless, many participants of the exciting occurrences of XX. Ct. are at the same time also Candides of our time."
EVA GRLIC
Cited from Eva Grlic: Memoirs, Zagreb, Durieux 1997 (Translation: Sonja Lebos)
"I have a certain special feeling, when I walk through Prague and an Italian-blue sky illuminates not just the gilded crosses atop the church towers and the freshly restored stucco on the house facades, but also penetrates deeply into memory of what was - yesterday or long ago - into what is closed forever or remains open, into what you have done in your life, but also into what has been done to you."
LENKA REINEROVA
Cited from http://www.radio.cz/en/article/106231
In 2010 the series of micro-conferences and workshops within the frame of the project Mnemosyne -Theatre of Memories / Phase 1: Getting Together were held in Zagreb and Prague, under the common denominator:
MNEMOPOLITICS. MNEMOTOPIAS. MNEMOPOETICS
We tried to address the issues we need to remember as society, how to remember them and which are the places where the remembrance should be inscribed, how that inscription should occur, as well how to convey elusive memories through artistic expression in different art forms and manifold spaces. We also tied to address the time span of 65 years after WWII, 20 years of Croatian 'freedom' and 20 years of life in Czech Republic without 'iron curtain'.
Our goal was to incite the interest among younger generation for the complex body of memories which our elderly co-citizens wanted to share, to instigate the discussions on the values we want to preserve as well on the modes of representations in visual and plastic arts, architecture, literature, film, video and media-art where the poetics of memory becomes stronger source for knowledge about the past than the history itself.
The outcome of this work should is leading to creation of a sort of collective libretto for the theater installations in 2011.
The phase 1 resulted in a publication and DVD.
Please read the publication on-line HERE or write to us and order it.