Turn turtle turn

Photo: Judith Buss

A commission from Münchener Biennale to create a piece of music theatre in a public space. Performed together with Oblivia performers, three classical trained singers and musicians of Ensembe ö! the piece was shared in public in Gasteig HP8 library hall.

“In the beginning was the ocean. Wind, perhaps, and billowing waves. Life emerged in the ocean – single-cell organisms at first, and then, sometime later, tardigrades, able to survive even nuclear apocalypse. Following many millions of years later, dinosaurs appeared, and finally, after eons of time: Humans. In the age of the Anthropocene, they made earth their own, filling it with human-made myths and purpose, with more life – and more destruction.”

In Turn Turtle Turn, Oblivia’s largest-scale musical theatre production to date, which had its premiere at the Münchener Biennale on June 5^th, 2024, we travel through time together: Set to music by eleven-piece Swiss ensemble ö in a composition by Yiran Zhao, the three soloist sing an Oblivia-made libretto that tells of beginning and end, of breath, grains of sand, and (in)finity – and of the long-extinct dodo whose species did not survive human intrusion into its habitat for long. With a space-sensitive arrangement of live music and electronic sounds, text fragments and vocals, we invite the audience into a playful exploration of earth’s status quo as a tiny dot amid the eternal time flow of life. In set-up, structure, and concept created not for the stage, but for the public space, we will not only turn the performance’s audience but also random passers-by at Munich’s HP8 into contemporary witnesses of our experimental-musical contemplation on the Anthropocene.

A thirst bigger than the ocean
quenched by water
from ancient wells
from ice age streams deep under
drops springing forward
as I turn the tap, brush my teeth
spit the water out
and back it flows
into rivers of darkness

On the beach connected to Odysseus and the rest of them
where the sun burns my pale skin
and leave its traces on my body lying
on this 400 million years old surface
of stones slowly grinded into sand

****

I was wrong
there are beginnings and ends
beginnings without ends and ends without beginnings

Eternity is a well measured entity
a finity
at some point
or then not

I walk on a hundred-million-year old ground
I feed off
sundrenched
white giant skeletons
burned down forests
sunk down in layers of earth
the compressed energy of the ancient are calling

– Excerpts from the Oblivia workbook on Turn Turtle Turn

More information: Premiere at Münchener Biennale

CREDITS

Performers (Oblivia)
Timo Fredriksson
Anna-Maija Terävä
Annika Tudeer
Juha Valkeapää

Singers
Fee Suzanne de Ruiter
Harald Hieronymus Hein
Lukas Siebert

Musicians (Ensemble ö!)
Oboe: Pilar Fontalba
Clarinet: Branko Mlikota
Trombone: Adrian Albaladejo Diaz
Percussion: Dino Georgeton
Piano: Asia Ahmetjanova
Violin: David Sontòn Caflisch
Violin: Sofiia Suldina
Viola: Maria Kropotkina
Cello: Martina Brodbeck
Double Bass: Daniel Sailer
Flute: Clara Giner

Conductor (Ensemble ö!)
Francesc Prat

•

Oblivia team
Concept, Direction, Dramaturgy, Texts: Oblivia
Composer, electronic live music : Yiran Zhao
Light design, projections: Meri Ekola
Costume design: Tua Helve
Graphic design: RÖD/ Jenni Salminen
Communications: Nassrah-Alexia Denif, Lisa Carolin Schubert
Production manager: Jenny Nordlund

•

Composition commissioned by the City of Munich for the Münchener Biennale
Coproduction by Münchener Biennale, Oblivia and Ensemble Ö
Funded by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation)and by the Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media).
Supported by Arts Promotion Centre Finland, Svenska kulturfonden, Helsinki City.
Residency: TD Berlin

Premiere | June 5, 2024, Münchener Biennale, HP8 Sendling, Munich

“How did it ever come this far?”

In the Anthropocene era and its human-made crises, this question marks the starting point of our new piece “Turn Turtle Turn” which premieres as part of the Munich Biennale 2024, indoors and outdoors at the municipal public library in HP8. Once again we will approach overarching human concerns and face them with text fragments, movement, and New Music.

Collaborating with three local singers and the twelve-piece ensemble ö under the direction of Francesc Prat, Oblivia will shape a grand tableau: We will meander between the eons of the dinosaurs and adventure stories, between ice age and parallel worlds, prehistoric geography and our hunt for fossil fuels. At times very close, then seemingly completely adrift, with “Turn Turtle Turn” we move on in retracing humanity’s status quo, wedged between continuous (self)destruction and persistent hope.

A thirst bigger than the ocean
quenched by water
from ancient wells
from ice age streams deep under
drops springing forward
as I turn the tap, brush my teeth
spit the water out
and back it flows
into rivers of darkness

On the beach connected to Odysseus and the rest of them
where the sun burns my pale skin
and leave its traces on my body lying
on this 400 million years old surface
of stones slowly grinded into sand

****

I was wrong
there are beginnings and ends
beginnings without ends and ends without beginnings

Eternity is a well measured entity
a finity
at some point
or then not

I walk on a hundred-million-year old ground
I feed off
sundrenched
white giant skeletons
burned down forests
sunk down in layers of earth
the compressed energy of the ancient are callingExcerpts from the Oblivia workbook on Turn Turtle Turn

Excerpts from the Oblivia workbook on Turn Turtle Turn.