The new hall of the Lithuanian National Drama Theater
"Medūza" art space of the Lithuanian Union of Artists is happy to present the live performance "Kayīb" by the artist and composer Andrias Arutiunian, which will take place on October 13. 20:30 in the new hall of the Lithuanian National Drama Theater. This performance is an extension of Arutiunian's Counterfates exhibition into a hypnotic hour-long live experience that interweaves sonic and political dissonances and themes of cosmologies and alternative ways of knowing, also explored in the artist-designed Armenian Pavilion Gharīb at the 59th Venice Art Biennale.
Kayīb is an hour-long meditative sound performance based on forbidden songs, lost voices, metal resonances, interwoven techniques of oil extraction and human voice tuning, and esoteric ways of knowing. The performance relates to Arutiunian's exploration of the gharīb tradition: underground culture, clandestine music-making activities, political resistance, and the historical trade in psychotropic substances originating from the Middle East and Caucasus regions.
Arutiunian claims that the performance can also be seen as a clash between historical figures of politics and music culture, who are often quoted or reimagined in the context of his work. Among them - in Paris in the 20th century. George Gurdjieff, an Armenian mystic who lived in the first half, as well as the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selasie I (better known as Ras Tafari), in the third 20th century. In the 1990s, he was fascinated by the talent of Armenian musicians. The performances of these personalities appear as speculative signs of the future, simultaneously immersing the listener in a trance of historical and musical narratives, in which the usual sense of time and space is resisted.
