Site: Yizkor Roza

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Excerpt of Site: Yizkor, performed on June 17, 2022 at the Roza Centre, Ruszcza, Poland.

Presented in collaboration with FestivALT Kraków.

 

Concept, direction and video by Maya Ciarrocchi

Concept, direction and music by Andrew Conklin

Jon Arkin, Electronics

Ben Goldberg, Clarinet

Morris Kliphuis, French Horn, Trumpet

Joanna Duda, Electronics

Natalia Chylinska, Movement

Małgorzata Haduch, Movement

Maya Gelfman, Movement and Text

Alexandrov Krilil, Movement

Katarzyna Pastuszak, Movement

Sarah Turquety, Movement and Text

 

Site: Yizkor is an interdisciplinary project created collaboratively by Maya Ciarrocchi and Andrew Conklin that documents manifestations of loss through text, video, and music. The work exists in three modes of presentation, allowing audiences and viewers alternative forms of engagement. Site: Yizkor is an autonomous video/sound installation, an evening-length musical performance in an immersive projected environment, and a workshop where participants create Yizkor* pages to mourn and commemorate lost people and places. 

 

In June 2022, Ciarrocchi and Conklin, along with a team of American and European musicians, performed the work at the Sichów Educational Foundation, an education and research center in Sichów Duży, Poland, followed by the Róża Centre for International and Interdisciplinary Art and Cooperation in Ruszcza, Poland where they were joined by movement-based artists. Both locations are historical sites once belonging to aristocratic Polish families. The properties fell into ruin in the aftermath of WWII, and their restoration is ongoing. These performances of Site: Yizkor were site-specific, with the musician and dancers performing inside the buildings surrounded by video projected onto the architectural surfaces. Ciarrocchi offered Yizkor writing workshops to the participants, and their writing was included in the performance. 

 

* Memorial books written by survivors of the Holocaust to commemorate people and places destroyed during World War II.