iris ter schiphorst

Programme text for the UA

Pietá or The grieving Mother stood beside the cross weeping where her Son was hanging or Passion M. or Crucifixion Madonna or The Crucifixion of (the) Madonna or Madonna in Slum or Stabat Mater dolorosa or maria madonna monster medusa or Silence M. Singing...

Mary represents an archetypal, paradigmatic figure of the 'female' perception of the world, beyond any religious constrictions. She embodies the hope of turning the worst into salvation, catastrophe into hope and utopia. Mary is the universal female figure of Western cultural tradition, who goes through all stages of human life as a child, girl, mother of the family, mother of God, but also as a completely normal woman. Mary: the supermother or just a human being, mortal and full of contradictions?

As she contemplates the torture and crucifixion of her son in passion 13 (13th station of the Way of the Cross), she gives an account of her life and the state of the world. In the face of her humiliated, executed and dead son, however, she is in danger of losing faith in salvation. What do we want to see? What do we want to hear? What can we bear and endure? What do we allow?

The form of the melodrama with the continuous figure of Mary requires the vocalist to shape the character's inner process. "Passion 13" attempts to take the unjustly neglected musical form of melodrama seriously again and to unfold its potential with the means of new music. When do the "old" stories touch us? When do they say something to us today?

The role of music is to interfere with the symbolisation processes that appear in the text, so that a re-symbolisation process can be set in motion. Where does kitsch begin, where does pathos start? The repression? It is precisely in the pathetic that something can be liberated and rescued, namely that which fascinates and captivates us with its intensity, but which is repeatedly withdrawn from us by the 'oversized' symbolic templates (clichés) into which our feelings are pressed in various social processes. What is encapsulated therein should be broken open in order to allow it to become ambivalent again and to be experienced anew - so that our own individual feelings (towards the dying, the dead and what fascinates us about them, about Mary and her motherhood, her wishes, hopes, dreams and pain) are given a chance and a space. And perhaps at some point I will be just as weighty as the raging social storm that wants to blow me over - again and again.

I.t.S./P.S. August 2010