Veltroyer
Veltroyer
Anna Lublina & Raha Dehghani Vinicheh
“Veltroyer” is a performative mourning ritual that draws on traditional Jewish and Iranian practices to mourn the loss of more-than-human worlds. The project is the result of an ongoing collaboration between Raha Dehghani Vinicheh, Anna Lublina, and Jerry Lieblich. In 2023, they explored Jewish mourning rites as part of a residency at ID_Tanzhaus Frankfurt and developed a collective ritual themselves, which included obituaries for extinct bird species in poem form. Together with new collaborators, they will now continue their research into ecological grief incorporating Persian mourning rituals and traditions. The results will flow into the conception of a dance piece.
Jury statement
With “Veltroyer”, Anna Lublina and Raha Dehghani Vinicheh create a haunting performative mourning ritual that understands the ecological crisis as an existential experience. The artists interweave Jewish and Iranian traditions with contemporary artistic practice, opening up new perspectives on the collective processing of loss. Animal songs that have become silent, somatic mediations and ritual practices become a moving reflection on our relationship to the natural environment.
“Veltroyer” goes beyond an artistic exploration – it is a necessary act of remembrance, mourning and the search for ways to live with the ongoing ecological collapse. The funding enables in-depth content-related and artistic research and contributes to the further development of this extraordinary interdisciplinary work.
