“Tell me Your Story - I braid Your Memory” by Rabiga Marx
curated by Delphine Marinier
December 1st, 2023 - 7-11 pm
Liebigstr. 4B, 10247 Berlin
In the video installation “Tell me Your Story - I braid Your Memory”, Rabiga Marx concentrates on questions of belonging and the place of rituals in our daily lives. During interviews with people of different backgrounds, she asks questions about the interviewees’ grandmothers, using their grandmothers as a metaphor and channel to access their roots. Each interview as a form of a ritual opens up a way of tracing shared cultural memories hidden in our subconscious.
Scroll down for further information about Marx’s project*
Beside the video installation and a theme-related sound installation, Ritual Performances will take place during the event as well as sharing The ceremonial Baursaks.
Event program
8 pm: Niiaz, Estelik (Remembrance Ritual)
8.30 pm: Lady Gaby, Decadelia! (Performance)
9 pm: Kovo M22, Transe… Mission: Nkééngé (Saga)
9.30 pm: Rabiga Marx, Pray for You (Ritual Performance)
Special guest: Mario Mariano
From 10 pm until late: DJ Trim
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About the project “Tell me Your Story - I braid your Memory”
“Karlygash…Karlygash...the bird who doesn’t have a place of origin, you are the child that Mother Earth sent me one beautiful day”… Speaking out loud like a prayer was a ritual which my grandmother made every morning before sunrise to greet her ancestors and ask them for protection. “Karlygash” in the Kazakh language means “swallow”. According to my Granny, the everyday (self-created) ritual, “Karlygash”, will always keep me connected to my roots, to my ancestors, and to Mother Earth. The word Ritual comes into English through the French rite from the Latin ritus. In modern language the terms “rite” and “ritual” often carry a specifically religious connotation, However, the terms also have overlaps with the words, “myth”, “symbol” and “faith”. In Western culture, the term “ritual” brings to mind references of the “exotic”, the Other, and practices linked with what have been deemed in the western mind as “primitive” cultures. Through my work, I aim to reclaim and bring new associations to the term “ritual” and to demonstrate how rituals are a necessary part of our everyday lives.
All stories in the project “Tell me Your Story- I braid Your memory” go through transformation and reinterpretation. While all are unique in their details, they share commonalities in content and form in the same way that as people we are all different on some levels but on others, the same. While interweaving the people from around the world with completely different stories and circumstances, Marx allows us to realize that the ways we recall stories and the memories as well as their themes are often very similar. People are “Karlygashs”, the bird who doesn’t have place of origin but is a part of Mother Earth.
Rabiga Marx
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Rabiga Marx is a research - based artist who investigates emotional vestigates of memory through modern interpretations of ritual. Her work encompasses the realms of performance, curation and archives. Having grown up in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, she later moved to Berlin to study the history of visual culture. Marx soon became interested in the meanings embodied in art objects and began to see ways in which such objects could evoke lost cultural memory. She is interested in how the meaning of objects as well as peoples’ memories can be either transmitted unknowingly or distorted over generations. Especially in post-Soviet countries and places of extreme regime changes, cultural practices have been deliberately severed from cultural memory. Stemming from her own experiences in such countries, Marx aims to uncover forgotten voices by conducting various forms of interviews as a basis for performance.