Press
“...Of the festival’s many co-commissions, the bravest and most brilliantly conceptualised was undoubtedly Yuval Avital’s Fuga Perpetua (...) With Fuga Perpetua, Yuval Avital does not refrain from showing the internal horror of one who is ‘always running’ – never gratuitous, but visceral and uncompromising in showing a universal experience that no one has the right to shy away from. ”
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“...A work of genius which really achieves its objectives in a thought-provoking and stunning show.”
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“...Despite its aura of reality - and the consequent risks for the perception of such a work - Fuga Perpetua is a masterful proof of artistic creation. An uninterrupted 80 minutes dense sonic score, performed impeccably by musicians of the Meitar Ensemble, is a counterpoint to an elaborate and engaging multimedia part in which the starting material (which also includes video contributions by Andrea Trivero and the UNHCR multimedia archive) is reprocessed in an intense and evocative poetic journey, but above all very respectful of the human figure.
Fuga Perpetua is certainly one of the most ambitious and complex creative challenges faced so far by the composer, who has combined a remarkable mastery of technical means with a respectful and involving manner, to offer an artistic reflection with an intense and original hand portraying one of the great tragedies of our time...”
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“...Bitterness pervades these days, reaching the lowest point given the difficulty of managing this epochal phenomenon of refugees for Europe, reflected in the iconic image of the mother washing her newborn baby in a puddle at the Greek-Macedonian border. But, as so often in humanity’s darkest moments, art gives us a glimmer of hope. Ai Weiwei is working in Greece and returned yesterday with a piano, a bit of a Syrian teenager’s dignity. In Italy, Yuval Avital, after more than a year of painstaking work has given birth to Fuga Perpetua, a work of great artistic quality and equally important from its human and moral standpoint, a work that might have created discomfort and disturbance for some spectators, but restores dignity to refugees. Not a work ABOUT refugees, but rather a work WITH refugees.
Yuval Avital, the musicians on the stage and refugees overwhelm us in a fuga constantly more precipitous, backed by a spiral of archetypes common to all human beings: the abandonment, the mother, the father, the house, the childhood memory, the return. This opera brings us all to an equal level, requiring of the audience the most essential matter we need today: closeness and empathy (...)If Fuga Perpetua will arrive in your town, go to see the show.”
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"Performed by Ensemble Meitar, in dialogue with multiple projections, a sophisticated surround-sound speaker system and a vocal crowd, Avital tells in a beautifully poetic and touching manner, the troubled lives of refugees.
For the full duration of the performance, the audience has been able to live a multi-sensory experience that shifts the point of view from an “objective” observation to an emotional subjective point of view of the individual, and the everyday issues that accompany a person constantly fleeing.
Avoiding any pre-established conclusions or messages, Avital delivers to the viewer a new point of reflection through the language of art, which here finds its highest expression and in which the audience is completely immersed.
Far from simply aesthetic use, art becomes the means to unite us all. The theatre, in a completely atypical manner compared to its historical tradition, becomes the plot of the actual, showing the stark reality, up to hosting refugee-performers among the audience. In this way, the public becomes part of the artwork itself: in an experience which could not be more authentic.”
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"Avital's talent both as a composer and as an artist had created a polyphonic Opera"
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“It is a Multiplied and restless opera, created from unfamiliar languages and silent faces....a mosaic created with a millimetric precision”
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“A very actual an dramatic theme which Avital, thanks to his sensibility of a composer, musician and a multimedia artist, had transformed into into an allegory full of artistic languages without any rhetoric or political narrative.”
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“With the theme of “home” at the heart of the programme, Brighton Festival 2016 will celebrate its relationship with the unique, energetic and creative city of Brighton, its artists, its characters, its sense of place and spirit whilst also considering universal issues and ideas around home, our communities and places of safety. Highlights include (...) experimental composer and musician Yuval Avital’s potent and thought-provoking new work, Fuga Perpetua, which reflects on the situation of refugees (...)”
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“(...) In this potent and thought provoking new work, Yuval Avital, a unique voice in the contemporary and experimental scene, creates an immersive environment using a combination of music, sound recordings, visual projections and movement. With contemporary music group Ensemble Meitar, it crosses the border between ‘us’ and ‘them’ and allows us to relate to refugees through the senses, intuition and imagination.”
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Editorial interview on Fuga Perpetua and front cover
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“(...) a poetic installation full with emotions (...) It is difficult to tell what strikes you more in this technological anthropological forest”
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“The space is immense. It overflows those who enter with the thrilling arcane effect of a timeless place: the palaeolithic cave of Lascaux in a technological metamorphosis, or the sacred place of the people of the water tribe in the prequel of Star Wars, dug by their ancestors in the bowels of the earth.”
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“The must-see multimedia project by artist and composer Yuval Avital”
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“In times of borders and walls, of useless nationalist pride and separations, arrives a huge artificial forest in which the women of East-Timor meet the lace makers of Brianza, old Albanian women touch the voices and sounds of Okinawa, and instead of reasoning through exclusion, it is preferable to speak of inclusion. This, and a lot more, is ALMA MATER, an imposing and ambitious installation, presented in the ‘Cattedrale’ venue of La Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan by Yuval Avital, undefined and undefinable personality...”
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“A must-see art installation”
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“When we are dealing with Yuval Avital, the great composer who creates massive sonic works, it is better to see and hear rather than to describe (...).
A must-see, even more than once”
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“A magnificent installation (...) Il Terzo Paradiso by Michelangelo Pistoletto meets one of Avital’s multimedia creations which redefines the space into a synthetic, highly allegorical and poetic tribute to ‘Motherhood’ in all its inclinations.”
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