Traces of sounds and noises accumulate, creep into the ear and remain there as echoes of past lives – in the streets of Palermo, in the fields, villages, camps of Sicily, in boats and ships, harbours, in small encounters, in parliaments. 

„Sirens of Babylon - Frammenti di un Lamento Furioso“ is a performative exploration of the german artist and viola player Ruth Kemna. The musical performance she presented on the wasteland of Palermo's coast and in the small theatre place „Spazio Area Madera“ is a hesitant, a reiterative beginning. 

She discusses her attempt to perform a new composed lament for the people who died in the Mediterranean – as an unheard concert on a boat not far from Lampedusa at the coordinates of a sunken boat.
She explores the dimensions of a lament in western classical music culture and question the role of her viola, the melodies and the movements of her body, the process of composition, given that each sound refracts the structural suffering of an inhuman border regime. 

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As part of the festival "Between Land and Sea"

Performances: 14 June and 23 October 2021, Area Madera & Ecomuseo Urbano Mare Memoria Vivo - Palermo