Lucia Festival \ Events
LISTENING
Saturday 14 December, 2024
Mojca Delač, Luka Hvalc, Saška Rakef Perko, Evgen Bavčar
Potovanje na robu noči
Dr Evgen Bavčar has a special ritual.
For over forty years, he has been recording the nightingale singing on May nights in his hometown of Lokavec near Ajdovščina.
Under the nocturnal cloak, in duet and in collaboration with the nightingale, the story from Lokavec unfolds into a narrative of the nightingales’ blinding so they shall sing in perpetuity – a reflection on blindness as social castration, on existential proximities and distances, the position of the blind throughout time and the question: why should the pleasure of the night not be equal to the pleasure of the day?
The nightingale tells Dr Bavčar he is not alone in the dark. But this is not just a story of their coexistence.
“When I was recording the nightingale for many years, here and in other places, a friend pointed me to the book Villa San Michele by Axel Munthe (1929). I was taken by the text, I started to listen to nightingales in a completely different way; though I already knew that in some places birds are blinded, either nightingales or other species, to make them think it is always night,” says Evgen Bavčar, explaining how he was inspired by this old text and a background to his interest in birds.
The night journey to the break of day raises profound questions about human existence, differences, exploitation, the struggle for justice, the environment, freedom and the intimate desire for duality, the Sun, and a new spring.
Concept: Mojca Delač, Luka Hvalc
Screenplay: Mojca Delač, Saška Rakef and Luka Hvalc in cooperation with Dr Evgen Bavčar
Director: Saška Rakef
Dramaturgy: Saška Rakef, Mojca Delač, Luka Hvalc
Sound design: Urban Gruden
Translation to English: Jeremi Slak
All the LUCIA festival events are free entry.
The festival venue is accessible to people with reduced mobility and wheelchair users.