KCan a museum space be theatrical? The exiled Russian cultural manager and author Marina Davydova, who will also be the acting director of the Salzburg Festival from next month, chooses the representative-didactic showroom in her new piece “Museum of Uncounted Voices” in the face of war, especially in Ukraine, and expulsion to confront their own, polyphonically competing historical narratives. Davydova, who grew up in Baku, Azerbaijan as the daughter of an Armenian father and a Russian mother, had to flee to Moscow during anti-Armenian pogroms in 1990. The “Museum” installation that she also staged, in which the ghosts of states and those persecuted argue spiritedly on stage, has now had its German premiere at the Freiburg Theater.
First, the audience is invited to Sinovy Margolin’s hall, where insignia of the Russian Empire are displayed in display cases. To the hinted opening chords of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto (the subtle sound design was done by Vladimir Rannev), Odin Biron’s metallic voice resounds from the bottom of the laces instructs that God watches over Russia and that the country has expanded exclusively through voluntary accession or through the recovery of ancestral territories, in contrast to western colonial powers. The shrill voice sends visitors to their seats to present Russia’s borders enclosing Alaska, and temporary losses of territory under Lenin are announced with sobs.
This is followed in the style of Soviet education by a lesson of the nations, each of which appears as cabinets with traditional costumes and historical maps. In a flattering tone, the invisible speaker of the Ukrainian closet instructs the well-behaved actress Marina Weis, who appears as Dadydova’s alter ego, that the Moscow Empire goes back to the Golden Horde of the Mongol rulers, why it is so rootless and only looking for expansion and why Putin is doing it wanted to destroy Ukraine. Flame projections (video: Oleg Mikhailov) capture the stage, in solidarity Weis puts on the Ukrainian vest and dances to snatches of the Ukrainian song about the red snowball, the song of the national liberation struggle.
Multilingual babble of voices
But the Belarusian cabinet reports with its map and its narrative that it was written in a European, liberal way much earlier, as part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, that the first Belarusian book was printed in the 16th century, but then under Peter the Great Great the Belarusian language was destroyed and the Belarusian intellectuals were killed under Stalin. When the Ukrainian cabinet responds that the Belarusians, whose country is now sending tanks to Ukraine, should have offered more resistance, the Belarusian cabinet complains that in 2020 the whole world would have admired its country for its peaceful resistance; a video of the mass protests is now playing on the stage.
Due to current events, museum cabinets in the Transcaucasus are also intervening in the debate, showing a largely identical territory as their ancestral territory, with Armenia complaining that it is threatened with bloody persecution for its Christian faith, as it once was by the Turks, Azerbaijan speaking of Armenian traitors in times of war, and Georgia denounces Putin’s 2008 invasion. The conversation, followed with interest, amusement and ultimately perplexity by the audience walking around the stage, culminates in the crescendo of a multilingual babble of voices.
In symbolically dim lighting, portraits of historical politicians appear – Lev Trotsky, Sergo Ordzhonikidze, Mustafa Suphi – who wanted to overcome the cacophony of nationalism in a revolutionary way, through terror, which then overtook them themselves. The avalanche of state-run murder is visualized by photos of prominent Gulag prisoners and the choral lament of terror and expulsion of those affected; the nobles, the intellectuals, the farmers, the priests, the deported peoples, once again as a swelling song of competition for primary victim status.
Over two non-stop hours, Davydova’s “Museum” dismantles the certainties, group claims based on former size, but also victim status due to group membership are disavowed. Only the individual fate appears authentic, as the monological final scene under the title “Person” shows based on the author’s biography. Weis recapitulates Davydova’s late visit to Baku, where she wants to renew her birth certificate, where the cemetery where her parents lay has been destroyed and where the authorities don’t want to know the half-Armenian woman. Weis admits that she doesn’t speak Armenian, only Russian. During Perestroika, Baku seemed provincial to her, she was drawn to Moscow, and she wanted to use culture to help open up and democratize the country.
Shortly after Russia’s major invasion of Ukraine began last year, Davydova was personally threatened and had to leave everything behind for the second time. As a result of Russian aggression, her Russianness is now offensive in many places, she notes. In the Baltics she was asked to return home and overthrow Putin. In Germany, they wanted to announce her as Azerbaijani at an event because of her place of birth, as part of the postcolonial discourse, as it was explained to her. It’s a paradox, says Weis: The Russian state considers her a national traitor, but Russian poetry rings in her ears and she dreams of Moscow boulevards.
Big applause. During the follow-up conversation, Davydova revealed that many people from post-Soviet countries had assured her that the “Museum,” which will be running at the HAU in Berlin from September 27th, tells their story.
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