Nostalgia/Homesickness/Birsfelden

by Ivna Žic, Lea Letzel and Nataša Rajković
in co-production with CULTURESCAPES
and the ROXY Birsfelden

concept and direction

Ivna Žic,
Lea Letzel

dramaturgy

Yves Regenass

contributors

Nico Caccivio,
Lorenzo Ciciro,
Lukas Schweizer,
Emre Karabasoglu,
Doris Dietsche,
Elijah Asamoah,
Nermin Grozdanic,
Tanisha Jenny,
Ashwin Kulasegaram,
Sahana Ravichandrarasa,
Shania Sheriff,
Alina Urfer,
Susanne Puchegger,
Rosmarie Ertl,
Severin Scherrer,
Thomas Lähns,
Beat Schönegg,
Hans Zimmermann,
Maruja Ortega,
Leonora Pinter,
Niels Pasquier,
Iris Simon,
Michel Jann

helpers

Anton Baecker,
Amrit Singh,
Leon Gaugler,
Franziska Ruoss

production management

Production workshop / Larissa Bizer

Technology

Mitch,
Benny Hauser

NOSTALGIJA / HEIMWEHE / BIRSFELDEN addresses and questions places as identity-forming frameworks on different levels. The project is realized as a two-part course on which the audience encounters staged approaches and interventions at various locations in Birsfelden. The boundary between staged and experienced reality blurs and offers a new experience of the district and its residents.

The course revolves around the concept of nostalgia (“homesickness”), which was first described as a pathological condition in 1688 by the Basel doctor Johannes Hofer. The term nostalgia was a neologism that described the sickening homesickness of Swiss mercenaries in foreign lands (allegedly often triggered by the sight of grazing cows).

In the first part of the performance, the two artists Lea Letzel and Ivna Zic examine Birsfelden as a place in an acoustic portrait based on noises, sounds and musical tones found in Birsfelden. In doing so, they devote themselves to a particularly ephemeral form of memory - a nostalgia of acoustic sounds.

Nothing is as short-lived and fleeting as audible sounds. Once they have faded away, they are only available as recordings and, as reproductions, they refer equally to the absence and presence of the former event.

How we perceive our surroundings is based on a complex interplay of hearing and seeing, of learned and stored knowledge. What we perceive as beautiful and pleasant, and what we perceive as repulsive noise, is part of our cultural biography.

In cooperation with Birsfelden residents, a walk through the town creates a sonic snapshot, the reverberation of which we try to capture: not only the town's numerous musical activities, organized in groups and clubs, but also Birsfelden's everyday, disruptive and historical sounds come together.

In a second part, Natasa Rajkovic stages the story of two protagonists in public and private spaces. The audience accompanies the actors in their search for the past.

In an atmospheric act of remembrance, the contributors and participants together visualize the place of their meeting - and thus write themselves into the (memorable) chronicle of Birsfelden.