La mine est une bouche
Illustration: ©Valérie Etterlen
POETRY . MEMORY . BIOGRAPHIES
16+ years old
Duration: 30 / 45 min
Participants enter the mine as if entering a mouth. A dark den, where the wind makes the barbed wire creak like ropes and the crematoria echo with a dull lament.
La mine est une bouche (‘The mine is a mouth‘) takes you into the dark depths of the Tiercelet mines in Thil, where, during the Second World War, Jewish deportees and Soviet resistance fighters were forced to undertake hard labour by the Nazis to manufacture V1 missiles.
It is the story of these bodies that writer Marina Skalova and composer Jacob Kirkegaard tell through this sound and poetic creation, which probes the traces left by the war and seeks to translate them into physical experience.
Outside the mine, the trail continues to the former site of the Thil concentration camp, where six poems bring out the unspeakable in the remains of history.
La mine est une bouche was created as part of the In the field project for Esch2022, European Capital of Culture.
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Text: Marina Skalova
Music: Jacob Kirkegaard
Sound recording: Jacob Kirkegaard
Illustration: Valérie Etterlen
Voices: Amélie Belohradsky, Marina Skalova (French version), Ashley Billings, Nelly Henrion (English version)
Voice Studio: Innervision
Artistic Director: Gaëtan Gromer
Production: Les Ensembles 2.2
Acknowledgements: Gino Bertacco, Stéphane Brusco, Emmanuel Mittaut, Daniel Pascolini and the association Mémoire de la mine.
Jean-Louis Sonzogni for his documentary film Rodina.