Long Distance Call

Green Line, Nicosia, Cyprus 24 Oktober 2005

On October 24th, in celebration of the 60th year of the UN, musicians from both the Greek and the Turkish parts of Cyprus collaborated in an immense on-location performance in the city of Nicosia.

The musicians stood on rooftops, balconies and in the streets on both sides of the Green Line. The sound was free to move over and across the buffer zone and formed a musical bridge between the Northern and Southern sides of the city. The music played at either side of the Green Line united in a musical composition. Even though often both sides could not hear each other because the music was not amplified, an echo and a musical wave reaching over the Green Line was a result of this large scale effort invloving 400 participants of both communities.

The project originated from Merlijn Twaalfhoven’s fascination for the capital city of Cyprus. The Green Line runs through the city as a divider since the civil war and Turkish invasion of 1974: a piece of no-man’s-land (under protection of the UN) between the Northern, Turkish part and the South, Greek part. Although the current situation is relatively at peace, the conflict is not settled at all and the devision is a shameful reminder of mans incapacity to live together.

The aim of the project was to narrow the gap symbolised by the Green Line between both parts of the country, physically as well as symbolically by placing an emphasis on the similarities between both communities.

In the symbolic sense, the project was a very meaningful one to both the participants and the audience. During the workshops, all of the participants spent time working together with participants from the opposite side, using their own cultural background as a point of departure. Asking both communities to work with the same material, but letting them sing in their own language allowed the similarities between both communities to be clearly be felt, even though these similarities may not have been clearly present at the foreground.

In April 2006, another project took place with divided Cyprus as a point of departure. 25 singers from both Northern and Southern Cyprus joined with 175 singers from Utrecht in a new spatial composition, performed in the Dom church. See: Echoes across the Divide

The Australian film maker Adam Sèbire has made a documentary based on Long Distance Call about the origin of this musical composition on both sides of the buffer zone.