In his new performance “The Story of One Sound II”, the composer and interdisciplinary artist Arturas Bumšteinas continues the search for the synergy of theater, sound and visual art, which began in 2020, when he staged an experimental sound performance “Urbantschitsch Method” based on the novel “Kalkwerk” by Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard in the main stage of the Youth Theatre.
The artist’s new performance is based not on the original interpretation of a literary text, but on the biographies of the actors of the Youth Theater, personal experiences etched in the memory of the director, discoveries inspired by the theater space, and the polylogue emerging between these dramaturgical elements of the performance.
On stage, we observe the faces of seven actors floating in the air, in the form of helium balloons, talking to each other about sound, hearing, its corporeality and ephemerality. The biographical stories of the actors turn from monologues into polylogues and are pierced by a sound coming from the basement, which determined the fate of the parents of the author of the theatre piece, says A. Bumšteinas, the director of the audiovisual performance “The Story of One Sound II”.
Arturas Bumšteinas – an artist working with sound. He is interested in listening/hearing problems and authentic methods of creation. Arturas works at the intersections of music, exhibition art, performance art, theater and radio art disciplines. His work has been presented by such institutions as Holland Festival, Unsound, Ultraschall, Cricoteka, Operomanija, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, CAC, Vartai Gallery, Berghain Kantine, etc. In 2014, Arturas was awarded the Palma Ars Acustica Prize for his radio art, in 2017 he was a resident of the Berlin artist program DAAD, and in 2019 was awarded the Earring of Borisas Dauguvietis for the integration of sound experiments into the contexts of Lithuanian theater. Arturas was also Artistic Director of the Festival Jauna Muzika (Young Music) in Vilnius, which brings together sound art, performativity, visual art and experimental practices of new music.