Ira Melkonyan

December 2024

How much can one person handle? Working in a laboratory among glass tubes, vials and refrigerators to organise blood while pandemics spread and wars are waged. The catastrophe is approaching from afar. Strange thoughts, desires and visions intrude into the regulated processes of a bloodless environment of seemingly hermetic walls and vessels.

During her residency at HELLERAU, theatre maker and scientist Ira Melkonyan is working on her new project together with designer and visual dramaturge Jimmy Grima and director and dramaturge Biljana Radinoska. With "Blood Thirsty", she continues her research into the performativity of fluids and ventures into what is perhaps the most symbolic bodily fluid. By reinterpreting blood and other biological substances, the performance explores a feminist mysticism of leaky bodies, political boundaries and a sense of connection.

As part of "Tanzformen: Empowering Bodies", artists Ira Melkonyan and Hana Umeda are in residence at HELLERAU. In a joint open studio on 5 December, they gave an insight into their respective research.

Biography

Ira Melkonyan is an artist and biologist. In her performances and installations she explores non-human actors, transitions, fluidity and fluid boundaries. Ira is from Odesa, Ukraine. Jimmy Grima is a multidisciplinary artist, researcher and designer working in the fields of graphics, performance, archival research and film. The duo met on Malta, the island of Jimmy's birth. Both graduated from DAS Graduate School (formerly known as DasArts) with an MA in Theatre and currently live between Amsterdam, the Netherlands and Nadur, Gozo. Another DAS theatre student, Biljana Radinoska, will accompany Ira and Jimmy during the current residency. Biljana is a theatre director and dramaturge from Macedonia, currently living in Arnhem in the Netherlands.

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