BARTO
THEATRE DIRECTOR
On the Calculation of volume
Theatre performance based on a novel by Solvej Balle
Supplementary Material for Jam Factory Art Center Open Call: After the Devastation
below you will find images, and quotes from the novel, that inspired us
above, at the very top of the page you will see a spotify playlist
Directed, adapted and choreographed by Uršulė Barto and Oksana Griaznova
NOW HIT PLAY, SCROLL DOWN, AND ENJOY THE TRIP
November 18th #122
"Our expectations of the stability of the world are based on an unstable foundation. There are no guarantees, and behind all the things we take for granted in our daily lives there are incredible exceptions, sudden breaks and crazy rule-breaking."
© Robert Houzar
© İsmet Doğan
November 18th #123
"We couldn't find the mistake. We couldn't find the reason why time broke. It didn't exist. I couldn't find a reason, and Thomas couldn't find a reason. We could find repetitions and discrepancies. Thomas was the repetition, I was the walking anxiety."
© Krisztina Horvath
November 18th #122
"That strange moment when solid ground disappears and the feeling that all the predictability of the world can be abolished suddenly comes over you, as if an existential emergency had suddenly been declared, a silent panic that doesn't prompt you to run away or call for help, and that doesn't require you to call for an ambulance or evacuate. The impression is that the preparation for such a situation lies somewhere in the recesses of the consciousness, like a tuning fork, which you don't hear in everyday life, but which comes at the very moment when you discover the unpredictability of the world, the knowledge that everything can turn around in a second, that what we never expected is possible."
© Sigurdur Gudmundsson
November 18th #136
"I am not saying that I have lost hope. She just rarely comes here. She moved out. It happened without any drama, hope didn't go out with a bang, it was more like an animal that found hunting grounds, a cat that moved into the neighbour's house, a plant that scattered its seeds where they can germinate better."
November 18th #122
"Our love has always been microscopic. [...] ...everything happens at the level of the atom, or even smaller particles. There are no abysses or distances between us. There is something else, a kind of cellular vertigo, a kind of electricity or magnetism, or maybe it's chemistry, I don't know. [...] Or maybe we are a weather system with condensation and evaporation: we are together, we look at each other, we touch, we condense, we meet, we love, we fall asleep, we wake up and we return to this strange relationship, a calm weather system without any natural disasters. Or rather a weather system that had no disasters until 18th of November."
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© Daniel Spoerri
November 18th #151
"Distance is smallest at night. When Thomas is asleep, we are separated only by the ceiling, a thin line between two forms of time. I sit in a room that keeps the world open and the distance between us as small as it can be. He calls the ceiling a floor, I call the floor a ceiling. But these are just words, they are not distance, they are a line that holds us together.
[...] HIS routine creates the music. What does he play for? He plays for me."
© Robert Houzar
"I recognise it from the noises. It's the same day."
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© Carol Ladewig
November 18th #123
"I don't know if you can say that we were looking for an explanation. We were going round in circles. We were not short of options, ideas or strange inventions. We moved in a cloud of theories, observations and different models of explanation. This often happened in the late afternoon or in the evening, when Thomas was getting used to the idea, when we sat opposite each other at the kitchen table, when we lay on the floor in the living room or on the bed, when we ate or had sex. Our explorations were constantly changing, almost like a dance that led us around the space, an innocent and somewhat clumsy polka of knowledge, a waltz of wonder, a joyful ballet of discovery, a tap-dance of facts and observations, a tango of exploration, with the two dancers combing through the space without looking for an exit or a place to rest"
© Aleksandra Kašuba
November 18th #122
"I counted the days. Today is #122 of my November 18ths. I am very far away from the 17th and I don't know if I will ever see the 19th. But the 18th keeps coming up again. It comes and fills the house with sounds. Human sounds. He walks around the house, now he goes outside. That's why I started to write. Because I can hear him in the house. Because time is broken. [...] Because I am trying to remember. [...] Maybe sentences have healing powers."
November 18th #228
"[...] But now, everywhere I go, I see my footprints. More and more things are appearing. Chocolate and caramel eaten. Some of the bread baskets have emptied, and on the bottom shelf in the bread section there are two airy packets of rusks left, because I took the others. The cheese fridge is missing several types of cheese, the vegetable section is missing tomatoes, and you can't help but notice that the shelves have been chewed up considerably. I did it, and it was very slowly, day by day."
November 18th #123
"At the same time, while my memory was working in a frenzy, my brain was accumulating the sounds of many identical days: a person walking through the house, footsteps on the floor or stairs, drawers opening, bags being opened, a hand or sleeve brushing against the wall, the sound of pipes rustling, doors opening and closing. My brain was accumulating movements, storing details and the repetitions of the day, and all of it was being screwed up by a centrifuge of incessant questions, a mill of logic, a kind of fever, an out-of-control activity of the brain which, without my participation, was systemising the material and reasoning in a way that, without human intervention, is similar to how a computer does its processing. Certain parts of my brain were working incessantly - like a construction project that almost gave me pain, it was breaking the day into pieces, gathering information from the surfaces that opened up and gluing them together into a picture, a new universe."
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© Jillian Mayer
© Jillian Mayer
November 18th #123
"Long nails grew, and I remembered, as if in a haze, standing in the bathroom with a nail clipper, but it was foggy days and my memory was blurry and grey, but now it was clear that I had been cutting my nails, or that I had been cutting them again, slowly, at the sink in the bathroom, because they were growing as if time existed, and I had been clipping bits of time in the sink, and I had turned on the tap, and the water had carried them to the sewer."
November 18th #180
"I am counting the days. They disappear one by one, as soon as they arrive. I note down the day's number in my notebook and before I know it, the day is gone. I do not know why I have to count the days, but I do not dare to stop doing it. I think I have to cling to the days. Maybe there is help to be found in those number sequences. Like a rope to pull yourself out of a well where you have fallen in. But if there's no one to hold the other end of the rope, you can't find any help. You can't get out anyway."
November 18th #123
"For the first time, I was scared. It was not only intoxicating, it was amazing and a bit creepy. It was scary, meaningless, without any magic, and the fog completely lifted. [...] We lived in two different times, and you couldn't hide the difference. Our territories were based on each other, conflicts raged on the borders and uncontrolled transactions took place between the zones. We were lovers in a landscape of conflict, Tom remembered nothing of our days together, we could not create foggy days, floods and misty mornings, we could not find our way together, we were nothing like anything double, misty or parallel. I couldn't find any clarity or laws of the day, and I couldn't find a way out."
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N.B. On the Calculation of Volume. Book I has been announced the winner of the 2022 Nordic Council Literature prize, NEW YORKER best book of 2024, a WASHINGTON POST notable book of 2024 and has been long-listed for the 2024 the National Book Award for Translated Literature (US).
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"The time is out of joint. O cursèd spite That ever I was born to set it right!"
W. Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act I, scene V