Events and
Activities

Performed by the labourers of The Bahrain National Quarry, composed and directed by Rabih Beaini.

A project by Ilaria Lupo, in collaboration with Rabih Beaini, with the participation of Hasan Hujairi.

Light performance Federico Nitti.

In 2014, Ilaria Lupo invited sound artist Joe Namy to collaborate on a sound performance for a construction pit in Beirut involving the site’s labourers. Namy created a site-specific soundtrack - composing a collaborative piece with the participants using their tools as instruments to perform live. The final performance was titled Concrete Sampling, arrangement for derbekah and jackhammer. Now in its second edition - in collaboration with sound artist Rabih Beaini - the project has a wider perspective on the region and is especially conceived for The Bahrain National Quarry.

Beaini engaged with the site laborers after contextual research, in particular on the pearl divers music - Fidjeri. Historically, Bahrain is influenced from the Persian, East African, South Asian and Levantine cultural basins. The Fidjeri is a vocal music of great complexity, embodying a pivotal history of labor in the region.

He involved the group in a process where an array of influences were explored and combined. The workers are from North India and despite no professional experience, they are very familiar with vocal practices. With Beaini, they rehearsed vocal droning, looping, amplifications, polyphonies, solo and choir. The final performance unfolds as a process navigating between dissonance and harmony. The composition is on and on dismembered and recomposed while the structure contains both conducting and improvisation.

Nocturne for Pit Orchestra digs into dynamics of music-making in the frame of labor while aiming to explore the intermingled layers connecting the quarry’s identity with the socio-economic shifts in 20^th century Bahrain and the Gulf Region.

The stone quarry - located in the desert of Hafeera - represents the very heart of sources extraction destined to construction. This landmark site has witnessed the transition between two economic eras and the consequent changes in the system of labor. It came at a time of acceleration, accompanying the radical reconfiguration of the urban landscape and the shoreline. It is a site of Modernity while the project attempts to question this ‘modern’ identity and its ties with the past, still reverberating today.

The performance will be presented in the quarry itself, opened to the public for the very first time.

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