Through an interdisciplinary, strongly visual and textured approach, Zuštiak excavates themes of human ambition, rootlessness, meaning and identity. HEBEL takes its name from the ancient Book of Ecclesiastes, appearing there 38 times, and still prompting ongoing discourse. Hebel can be translated as vanity, but also emptiness, vapor, breath and absurdity. It lies at the heart of the Book’s key question: “What do you gain from all your work?” HEBEL reflects on temporal human effort and individual life’s worth. HEBEL draws us into an evocative, emotionally charged exploration of life’s meaning and what it means to witness in destabilized world.
Reflecting the scale and proportions of the HEBEL’s ontological questions and informed, too, by Michel Foucault’s writings on docile bodies, power and architecture, Zuštiak in collaboration with scenographer Keith Skretch create a large-scale kinetic scenography that changes to steadily re-contextualize performers’ bodies and to destabilize the audience’s assumptions, thus extending the piece’s inquiries into time, effort, and ending.
Other creative points of departure include: Vera Chytilova’s Czech feminist movie Daisies (1966); Michel Foucault writing “Of Other Spaces” on heterotopias, and NASA’s recordings of black holes emanating sound.
Integrating choreography, kinetic scenography and live music, HEBEL crosses disciplines to make a visceral performance in quest for meaning where the turbulent past and present are alive and the future is envisioned.
Learn more about Pavel Zuštiak and Palissimo.