M68N /2: An Inaccessible Place

Théâtre de l’Usine, Geneva, 2015

The second part of MALSTRØM 68N, «An inaccessible place», followed the investigation on the tracks of Edgar Poe’s maleström in the Norwegian High North. The material gathered during the expedition – interviews, travel journal and various visual and sound curiosities – was staged at the Theater during the four evenings of representation.

From Jesuit thinker Athanasius Kircher to Danish bishop Erich Pontoppidan, from Dante’s Inferno to the memoirs of sociologist Norbert Elias, the sources gathered resonated with the narratives and testimonies collected in the Lofoten islands: seismic surveys and oil controversies, killer whales fleeing from the fjord, Sámi dreams and local knowledge, Gulf Stream, climate change and arctic identities… A series of entangled issues calling for new fabulations, somewhere in between Poe’s « maelström » and the actual phenomenon of the « malstrøm », as it has been experienced by the people of Nordland.

The conference led by Aurélien dialogued with extracts from the investigation journal read by Sandrine, while the voices of the people encountered during the expedition were also convened. Historians, biologists, climatologists or fishermen, marine mammals specialists or anti-oil militants, surfers or touristic guides, archeologists or entrepreneurs: together they all formed an assembly of voices gathered around the maelström, as the image of a world of growing complexity and entangled issues, always leading us to find new trajectories.

 

Conception et mise en scène: Aurélien Gamboni & Sandrine Teixido
Mise en scène et collaboration artistique: Théo Keifflin
Création sonore: Raphaël Raccuia
Création lumière: Matthieu Baumann
Coordination, production exécutive et collaboration: Fanny Bénichou
Production: retro:projet et LMEC
Co-production: Théâtre de l’Usine
Soutiens: Ville de Genève, République et canton de Genève, Loterie romande, Pro Helvetia, Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, Services Industriels de Genève, Fondation Ernst Göhner