DIFFERENT BOMBS

We want sausage without animals and war without perpetrators. In both cases, we have successfully externalized, suppressed and diversified the act to such an extent that the taboo no longer needs to be witnessed. Animals killed. Targets eliminated by remote control.
This is slaughter without butchers. It is the way out for a society of sensitive people who have internalized a genocidal program.

(Nataly Bleuel in conversation with Marc Sinan)

Bombs fall, bombs kill. Daily and anonymously. In war, who is perpetrator and who is victim is often in the eye of the beholder. The concert DIFFERENT BOMBS takes the form of a composed research on the simultaneity of victimhood and perpetration. The piece is written for 8 electric guitars, 8 violas, 8 double basses and one voice. Marc Sinan has taken the risk to explore the conditions and consequences of bombings in a forceful way without taking a moralizing stance. All the while, the composer has confronted his own family history.

DIFFERENT BOMBS narrates the story of his aunt, who was forfeited by the National Socialists in Berlin. As a girl born in 1929, she lived through severely traumatizing years of war. Drawing on the work DIFFERENT TRAINS (1988) by Steve Reich, Sinan incorporates transcripts of conversations with his aunt––now 91 years old––into his composition. Her slightly alienated statements are performed by his eldest daughter through singing and speaking. Her words carry everything: structural complicity, injury, the perpetrator’s hubris, the trauma of hunger, fear of death and despair.

DIFFERENT BOMBS takes the form of a tirade; an expression of turmoil, pain and anger at us humans. The play is a parable for the wrong path we have taken when we think we can avoid responsibility for our actions.