Interference, 2012
Two channel video installation, HDV video, 08:00 min., color, sound
Interference in physics is the superposition of two or more waves resulting in a new wave pattern.
In the two screen video-installation a choir of Russian born women with German origins sing chants nearly forgotten today in Germany and, in parallel, a choir of German children learn and strike up the same chants. Most of the German people that were born in Russia during the last century have been victims of ethnic cleansing during Stalin's Terror and Communism, and have been precluded to speak their language. Daughters or nephews of ancestors tried to secretly maintain their culture, handing it down from generation to generation. The women filmed by the artist are keepers of very special Teutonic traditions and memories: they guard and treasure customs and words no longer in use today in the country of their origin.
Timea Oravecz, after long-term research within the Deutsche-Russische community living in Berlin, activated a further process of handing down by transmitting to the new generations the ancient chants. Now a group of children in Berlin are carrying forward a memory that their parents had forgotten.
(Elena Agudio)
