An archive for eternity: ceramic tablets as indestructible data carriers are to be stored in the Hallstatt salt mines in order to endure beyond the end of our civilisation. Austrian Martin Kunze began to turn this idea into reality in 2012, and has since then been collecting newspaper articles, scholarly essays as well as personal stories for his Memory of Mankind. This extraordinary project inspired Swedish director Marcus Lindeen to interlace documentary material with fiction in his current work. Interviews with Kunze as well as other people – a man who suffers from a rare form of amnesia, an archaeologist who searches for traces of a lost queer civilisation – are assembled into an intimate conversation about the obsession with remembering and being remembered. In the stageless theatre, a space shared by the audience and the four performers alike, the question arises: Does the unique power of humans rest on memory or, in fact, on the ability to forget?
Text, Direction, Concept Marcus Lindeen Concept, Dramaturgy, Translation Marianne Ségol With Sofia Aouine, Driver, Axel Ravier, Jean-Philippe Uzan and the voices of Gabriel Dufay, Julien Lewkowicz, Olga Mouak, Nathan Jousni, Marianne Ségol Music, Sound design Hans Appelqvist Stage design Mathieu Lorry-Dupuy Light design Diane Guérin Costume Charlotte Le Gał Casting Naelle Dariya Technical Direction David Marain Sound engineer Nicolas Brusq Video technician Dimitri Blin Production, Management Emmanuelle Ossena, Charlotte Pesle Beal, LIson Bellanger (EPOC productions) Translation surtitles Simona Weber (German), Babel Subtitling (English)
Production compagnie Wild Minds Coproduction Wiener Festwochen | Freie Republik Wien, T2G Théâtre de Gennevilliers, Festival d'Automne à Paris, Piccolo Teatro di Milano - Teatro d'Europa, Le Quai ‐ CDN Angers Pays de Loire, Comédie de Caen – CDN de Normandie, Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brüssel), Le META-CDN Poitiers Nouvelle Aquitaine, CDN Besançon Franche-Comté, Nouveau Théâtre de Besançon CDN, Le Grand T-Nantes, Le Lieu Unique-Nantes, PEP Pays-de-Loire, Le Méta CDN Poitiers Nouvelle-Aquitaine Project supported by
the Ministère de la Culture – Direction régionale des affaires culturelles, ADAMI Supported by Fondation d’Entreprise Hermès
Premiere May 2024, Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brüssel)
Wiener Festwochen 2022 L’ Aventure invisible