• Tue 04 09 2018 •
Fractured Memory Ogutu Muraya

20:00

Venue: Theater im Bauturm, Aachener Str. 24–26, 50674 Cologne
In English
15€ / 10€ reduced

In cooperation with Theater im Bauturm

OGUTU MURAYA needs nothing more than a space, a table and a screen to captivate his audience. This collage of personal texts, archived film footage and abstract sound takes James Baldwin’s essay Princes and Powers as its starting point. In the essay, Baldwin describes a congress of intellectuals from various African countries, which was held at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1956. Splicing together different voices, he takes on varying points of view and thus tackles the complexity of historical narratives. This literary method makes it clear that the historical record is not guaranteed to be an archive of truth but rather is always a construct or interpretation of events.

In his turn, Ogutu Muraya also makes use of this technique. What begins in near sacred silence soon becomes a striking solo piece through the power of his voice and the poetry of his language. Muraya links Baldwin’s multi-voice narrative style with memories of violence and unrest in Kenya, which he experienced as a youth. He subjectively bears witness while intellectually objectifying these events, moving the traumas of his own biography at once closer and further away. Art, for Muraya, is a way to survive. Personal hardship is contained in a multi-perspective narrative; time and place merge and intersect, shaping a new lens through which we may view this discontinuous, complex performance.