Dert

Photo gallery

Photo: sintija habjanič

Photo: sintija habjanič

Photo: sintija habjanič

Photo: sintija habjanič

Photo: sintija habjanič

Photo: sintija habjanič

About the project

Slepica, Medi and other characters could be over a hundred years old. They were deeply asleep for a long time, but are awake now. They were summoned from the past and from afar. They stare at us with their piercing eyes, as if they were half alive and half dead. Their songs are an echo of howling remorse that the heroines awaited for years, decades, even centuries in  invincible despair of forced muteness. Their tempo is different, time flows at a strange pace: decades for the birth of a son, a few days for a fatal shot, one day for the victory in the greatest war, a moment only for a wedding, a dance, or a funeral. The milk of ancient melodies and epics drips from the narrative like the greatest miracle, like a healing topping for women whose tied breasts and mouths are drained from fatigue.

We share habitats and habituses withthe heroines of DERT in extended time through the experience of touching and overlapping on some edges, and thus creating a secret commitment to belonging – the same coordinates, sometimes the same codes. We belong to what we understand, both present and absent. They are our rearview mirror – everything seems to be close here and far behind simultaneously. Real and unreal at the same time.

DERT is a canvas on which the contents of the consciousness of our society, its fears, beliefs, doubts, states, questions, problems, pleasures, the history and the present, behaviors and nonsense, desires are projected.DERT is also reminiscent of a deadacholicsocial narrow-mindedness that condemns every step and every action; it sang the last praises to the heroines with a vocabulary adorned with wonderful notions such as tradition, family, heroism..., and hid behind them primitivism, mythomania, misogyny. It reminds us of who created and buried the heroines – sworn virgins, virdžinas – Liljana, Suni, Lindita.

*Album DERT was created entirely during the rule of the coronavirus and is unique experiment. The rehearsals were conducted at home, individually, occasionally online. The performers used smartphones to record their own sections, which we later stitched together into the present album.That is why this album is a remarkable document of this special period, dedication and focus of singers. The recordings we created gave sound to the mysterious power and spirit of the music, captured the lost moments in time, drove away the gloom, uncertainty and fear. Above all they are a testament to this time. 

performed by: New music theatre CHOREGIE

concept and texts: Karmina Silec

music: Tellu Turkka

SONGS FROM AFAR / Daljne pesmi    

GLASS MASKS / Stekleni obrazi    

ANCIENT VOCABULARIES / Starodavna besedišča        

STEALING LIFE OF FATHER / Kradljivka očetovega življenja   

POETIC GALAXIES / Poetične galaksije       

PLEASURES OF TOUCH / Ugodja dotikov    

LAST RITE / Poslednji obred        

UP AGAIN / Predramljena          

INCANTATIONS/ Zarotive

HEAVEN / Raj        

COFFEES / Kofeti    

production: Carmina Slovenica, 2021

Press

The shocking sound of endemic songs ... Despite the cold space, the singers performed their task superbly: as always precise both in intonation as well as technically, with clearly shaped phrasing and articulation, with interpretive depth, vocally flexible and penetrating. The songs were sung with expressivness - dressed in unique, at times archaic but still harmonious sonority - and spread with horrifying beauty over stones and cold walls of the karst underground. The atmosphere in the hall fitted the shocking lyrics and created a special ecstasy. Drops of water, which gently crept from the stalactites and struck the stone base, strengthened the mystery of audio and literary messages ... (Odzven / SIGIC)