ADAMA: Secret Life of Stones

Musical Theatre Performance and Installation | 35-70 minutes | Hebrew, English, German

PREMIERE: 01.09.2021, Westopia – Festival Für Eine Mehrsprachige Literatur Der Zukunft, Burg Hülshoff, Germany

“In Hebrew, DAM is blood, ADAM is human, and ADAMA is earth. Language stretching and compressing, just as at the earth’s crust, with the human soul under pressure, tension, folding, faulting, magmatic intrusions, there are millions of years of distortions in our bodies.”

ADAMA is a musical theater performance and music installation by the singer, composer, and drag-performer Shlomi Moto Wagner.

Inspired by the concept of Westfailure: the failure of the economic, social and environmental aspects of the nation states – I have spent time next to the whispering winds of the Ramon Crater in the Israeli desert, to tell the story and songs of the rocks, stones and the ancient solidified life of the desert where I learned how I could lip-synch and embody the singing of the winds and turn them into a musical journey uncovering a portal to genesis.

During my research in the desert, I created musical instruments and an installation made of stones, rocks and copper fields that interact with my body into sounds — a communication channel to bring together life with what seems like lifeless nature and climax as a desert-drag-performance in ecstatic trance.

The piece combines texts and music from stone partitures I found in the desert, Hebrew prayers from the Jewish community of the village of B in Westphalia as documented by the writer Annette von Droste Hülshoff in the book “Die Judenbuche” and contemporary research in Cymatics (the study of visible sound vibrations) and their part in shaping landscapes, bodies and language.

ADAMA was first created as part of the project “Westfailure” and “The White white west?” by Burg Hülsoff — Center for Literature in 2021, funded by the kulturstiftung des bundes, the kunststiftung nrw, the academy of media arts cologne, The westfäliche kunstverein, and the ministry of culture and science of the state of north rhine-westphalia

Shows:

(Premiere) September 3-4-5, 2021, Westopia Festival, Burg Hülshoff (Germany)

November, 2022, “Queer Magic Festival”, Shitim desert ashram (Israel)

February 18, 2022, “AFFECTED” exhibition at Museum on The Seam, Jerusalem (Israel)

Mai 29, 2022, “PAF Closing!” – Berlin Performing Arts Festival, Berlin (Germany)

Juni 6, 2022, Finksten Festival, Brandenburg (Germany)