Meryem’s Ballad
Cross-cultural storytelling performance with music and poetry
babelfis & Mert Akbal (DE)
babelfis is an indie/pop duo formed by musicians Sevda Hamzacebi and Cem Dinler. Hailing from Istanbul – now based in Berlin, the band pursues all kinds of stories that they have grown up listening to. Deriving from both western and eastern roots and a scope of other personal influences, the duo focuses on melding all these experiences together through new forms of musical and poetic expressions.
Meryem’s Ballad, The Odyssey of a Guest-Worker is a fresh interdisciplinary artistic thought-provoking creation. The performance reimagines Wagner’s portrayal of Senta, a self-sacrificing female figure in the opera the Flying Dutchman, and her friend Mary from the libretto. Through babelfis’s melodies and Mert Akbal’s visuals, the performance navigates Meryem’s path to empowerment, weaving migration, and gender experiences.
Mert Akbal is a visual artist and researcher specializing in generative media art, cognitive sciences, and artificial intelligence. They create diverse visual media, conduct transdisciplinary research, and coordinate interdisciplinary projects. Akbal teaches at the University of Fine Arts Saar, Saarbrücken (DE) and collaborates with the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, engaging in interdisciplinary projects and science communication efforts.