Daniel Gloger: Tis Nature’s Voice–as in a borrowed life

It is a risk to approach as a singer-performer the linguistically powerful oeuvre of Luljeta Lleshanaku, who truly writes her heart out with her poetry. How can one make these images of her ancestors, her experiences from her Albanian childhood to her experiences in the U.S., where she found a second home, and of human history, which always shines through, resonate in the most confined of spaces?

In the first half of the two-part performance, the cycle »negative space« takes center stage. The »space« that Luljeta Lleshanaku conquers in this cycle is filled with what she has experienced, what she has found, and sounds: a self-assertion and self-discovery in conflict with a force field that always surrounds her, full of culture and history, but also full of violence and repression.

The second part begins in a very personal and intimate way. Now the electronically multiplied voice becomes a textless instrument of confrontation with reality, always in direct response to the selected texts, which unfold crystalline clarity as a condensate of Luljeta’s lyrical work.
Just as the author raises her voice and creates universal poetry in constant awareness of her roots, the song reflects the dissolution of the individual in the community of all, or in Luljeta’s words, »At last I am free from the illusion of freedom. Now I am free.«

(Daniel Gloger)