80 Washington Square East, NYU

Sahra Motalebi

Flesh, Format 2 (From Directory of Portrayals)

April 8, 2018 7:00pm

Einstein Auditorium, Barney Building

Swiss Institute announces the fifth event in the Lunar Intervals series, Sahra Motalebi’s Flesh, Format 2 (from Directory of Portrayals).

Part of Swiss Institute’s OFFSITE program, each Lunar Interval event takes place in a different location in Lower Manhattan, in the lead-up to Swiss Institute’s move to 38 St Marks Pl in the East Village. Drawing a connection with cycles and orbits, each takes place during a different phase of the lunar cycle, from the waxing crescent to the new moon. Each will be also followed by the publication of a 7-inch record.

Lunar Interval V: WANING GIBBOUS is Flesh, Format 2 (from Directory of Portrayals) a 45-minute vocal-only performance that extends the musical score of Sahra Motalebi’s open-form, multi-year opera Directory of Portrayals. Drawn from an online relationship with her sister in Iran whom Motalebi has never met, this iteration introduces still more from this real-time dialog in the form of spoken text and musical sections, exploring the complicated, often conflicting, autobiographical, geographical, and cultural narratives therein. On the way to a staging that is impossible and unmakeable – this opera continues to explore narrative structures and dramaturgical imperatives that question its very production. The libretto will be published as a work of experimental auto-fiction edited by Annie Godfrey Larmon, in 2019.

Please RSVP to rsvp@swissinstitute.net.

For questions about accessibility, please email lou@swissinstitute.net.