Project
Medea Project_1
The first creative offering of the Medea Electronique team is titled Peirama 1 (pronounced Peeramah Hena). It is based on a different reading of the Myth of Medea. The Chorus, the inner voice of Medea, is the human conscience reacting to what will follow and tries to change the course of the events and prevent the act of murder.
The psychological swings of the characters are of utmost importance to this play, and Medea’ s dilemma is repositioned on the moral-immoral, fair-unfair axes, given today’ s different circumstances. The modern day Medea, has different experiences in many domains. She has been listening to different music, has memories of televised wars, Reuters’ pictures in her mind. Recorded, radiophone sounds are reproduced in parallel to her inner voice, making the latter indiscernible. Bits of Audiovisual information fly around her head affecting her judgment.
The play is in many ways diversified from a classic Euripides Medea. In terms of content, plot, presentation and rigidity. It is largely relies on Interactive technology to create a dynamic environment where visual and sonic data of the performance are continuously processed and re-imported into the play.
It was first presented at the Benaki Museum in April 2007
Monotonia
Monotonia is Part of the Decmber 11-12 Opening of the Onassio Cultural Center
Departure……
Cavafis’ “Monotonia” and Vainegem’s “The Revolution of Everyday Life” serve as departure points for an audiovisual sculpture that attempts to deconstruct the very meaning of monotony; lack of variety, tedious repetition and routine. Deconstruction leads us to a cycle of events whose components are: illusion, obstruction, liminality and condition. Each component has individual characteristics, it is acted out differently
and it is not bound to any specific order but is instead used to identify and create certain sets of scenarios.
Arrival……..
The combination of image, sound, light and performance is intended to increase the level of sensory stimulation of the audience in order to suggest certain emotional thematics and structures. The objective then becomes to trigger the audience with a connecting language in multiple instances in a seemingly monotonous cycle.
What If…
What if you wake up one day with the feeling that one day has become an imitation of the other, subsequently followed by yet another, identical. Imagine the realization, of something so simple, but with a striking sensation, that whatever happened has happened again, over and over again. Knowing that the only way to change it - is to break the repetitive cycle so that it happens no more.
A dialogue triggers…
Triggered by the meaning of the word ‘monotony’, a dialogue between Manolis Manousakis from Greece and Michael Larsson from Sweden was established οriginating from Kvafis’ ‘Monotonia’ and Vanegeim’s ‘The revolution of everyday life’. Τhese two writings acted as departure points for a conversation surrounding four identified thematics; liminality, condition, illusion and obstruction.
a methodology….
By utilizing the above elements a process of sequencing possible combinations was established and put in conjunction with real life experiences. Through this methodology of connecting reference points the backbone of ‘Monotonia’ was created and an audiovisual translation by MedeaElectronique was initiated.
MANIFEST
Repetitive Actions of senseless behaviors
By Medea Electronique
We live in a universal condition, forcing upon us a state of liminality. Liminal actions and thoughts define our everyday actions of apathy; “The same things will happen again, and then will happen again, the same moments will come and go”.
We have followed that condition in our own accord, choosing the easy path and limiting our self in a confined social environment. An environment based on exclusions and social definitions serving the condition we live in.
‘Fake’ illusions of achievable materialistic goals lead to a cycle of events creating a monotonous life pattern. Commercial life style, big restaurant chains, artificial goods and faux-tech hope for a better future structured on a pyramid of materials made with pain in the third world to be consumed painlessly in the west.
The condition serves the few who belong in the system; a system of social exclusions and secluded environments, The condition has a ritualistic way of defining its purpose. It takes ownership of human behavior and controls its decisions.
‘Forbidden’ illusions are the only hope we have in our society, waiting to be awakened by obstructions. These are illusions made in childhood defining our future dreams. Dreams that where oppressed by the condition we live in.
We are waiting for these obstructions of the system to take us by the hand and move us away from the condition we live in. Obstructions are loud, forceful actions of events reacting to the conditional social system we live in. Obstructions are the inner voices; Socrates demon as he describes in his Apologia; a revo- lutionary force aiming to awaken us from our condition. They appear to us as Faces; images that call us to remember our childhood illusions and restructure our path in life. An obstruction is a scream for hope, a rebellion, a fight, a reassurance that a different future exists.
“Monotonia” does not aim to set itself against the society we live in but for the people who are trapped in this condition. We aim to break our personal monotonous cycle of events. We strive to find a new hypothesis of how social environments can survive in a modern society of different behaviors, cultural backgrounds, needs and dreams.
Curators Note
Through Monotonous Paths of Revolution
By Elli-Anna Peristeraki
Monotony is a feeling that everyone has felt at some point in their life. Monotonous moments, monotonous manners, monotonous thoughts – all of these are part of our every day life and have a strong psychological affect upon us. Based on the writings of the situationists and the stimulus of Cavafy’s poem, Medea Electronique read contemporary monotony as an inner human state, and perhaps the root cause of the depression that is common amongst the average person in contemporary western society. In their own non-aggressive way, Medea Electronique seek to set a trigger that may launch internal questioning about the pursuit of happiness, which seems to lie above and beyond the consumerist habits and stereotypes of contemporary society.
‘Monotonia’ is an artwork that attempts to engage the viewer emotionally and intellectually. It underscores the conscious or unconscious monotony in the average person’s life and tries to take the audience along a journey of self-criticism and introspection, with the final aim of prompting the viewer to re-allocate his or her inner world in order to break their personal monotonous circle. In this sense the artwork does not seek to liberate the viewer from monotony but instead tries to become a critical intervention in their personal sequence of life events, provoking monotonous feelings that seek to stimulate their thoughts.
The combination of the texts of Cavafy and Vaneigem bring a revolutionary dynamic to ‘Monotonia’, ascribed by the simplicity of monotonous images and sound. Through the deconstruction of the two texts, the main motifs of the artwork – circle and repetition- arise and intertwine with the four thematic points – illusion, liminality, obstruction and condition- that get translated to images-sequences which get smashed by the montage. While viewing the artwork each viewer is called to rebuild those sequences, building this way his own story in the artwork. In this way the projection of personal experiences on the subjects that are pertained by the artwork, are facilitated.
‘Monotonia’ tries to create an experience for the audience. To achieve this it has to stimulate all senses. While image concentrates on feeding the conscious, music concentrates on awakening the unconscious. Yet sound here has another role as well; that of the narrator. It draws attention from one sequence-screen to another, within the gallery space facilitating the recital of image. In this way the relationship of the two mediums becomes parallel and supplementary, with sound amplifying the meanings of the visual while at the same time performing an individual and essential function for the reading of the artwork.
Through this structure, ‘Monotonia’ seeks to become an oblique interactive play. The goal of creating an experience in the gallery space is interaction per se – not in the classical sense of action-reaction within the gallery space but in a wider context of action in the gallery and reaction in real life – moving from the inside out.
Siggrou Avenue 107-109, Αthens 11745
information: 213 0 178000, tickets: 210 900 5 800
Email: info@sgt.gr
To enter the opening of this event it is essential to have a ticket in prior. The tickets last for two hours of stay in the Cultural Center and attendance of at least one of the productions of the opening.
Koumaria
MedeaElectronique organizes Koumaria Mixed Media Art Residency in the fall offering a week’s retreat for media artists in rural Sparta, Greece.
At the foot of Mount Taigetos, a huge private olive garden will be transformed into a laboratory for contemporary art. Offering a 400 square meter residency made into a modern mixed media art studio, we aim to bring together artists of different disciplines in order to develop a collective mixed media art project.
We are interested in the process itself, as a hypothesis and as an experiment in the search for an emerging work ethic, as an intense and refreshing experience that will serve as a model for future creative gatherings.
Case Of Emergency
Case of Emergency is the project title of a performance that deals with the ongoing multi level decay of the historical (and not only) part of down-town Athens, Greece. Athens, like most EU capitals, is loaded with a sequence of historical events, cultural tendencies and practical particularities, which are embodied in variable percentages as aspects of the city’s contemporary character. Such an aspect with a major impact relates to the city’s architecture – buildings, streets and land marks – shaping our habitat and so our everyday life. Our “walkthrough” starts exactly here.
We examine the older, past century buildings that survived (not intact of course) the cruel cannibalism of modern urban “development”. Buildings that nowadays are left to rot under the unbearable weight of overlapping layers of dust and time. We document and explore the relations between the obvious structural decay of the habitat and the degree of influence that this decay has on the people living in it. Not in a scientific or philosophical way, but in a more simple first level aestheticist way, concentrating on their appearance, external colors, eye sight direction and maybe mood… That is of course related to “scientific or philosophical” related variables, but we’ll not deal with this either here or now… Nevertheless, we can’t hide our sadness and rage about it. What for others might be a settled everyday situation, to us is an unacceptable non stop insult to our dignity both emotional and spiritual. We experience striking events and strong emotional stimuli during our day-to-day life, so for us telling stories about these experiences and sharing these emotions through live performance is a crucial artistic approach, as well as a strong need for a cathartic release.
Finding the most interesting and powerful path that would combine our individual mediums for expression was just a part of the creative process. We concentrate on collection of materials on-site, studio creation and manipulation, structured improvisation and rehearsals. We want and need this project to be as direct and as “perception-of-our-own-reality” accurate as possible. We use the following tools and creative methods to achieve this:
- Live Cinema techniques that involve live editing / mixing between live and prerecorded footage
- Live Electroacoustic music created through manipulation of prerecorded and generated elements
- Live Painting on a variety of materials while operating a video camera
Case of Emergency is not intended to dictate or insinuate wise solutions or attribute responsibilities or blames. Case of Emergency is to portray, communicate and so comment on a sequence of evocative real life events, for people to see and maybe think through virtually experiencing it. This is our side of the story; this is our slice of contemporary life…
From Athens with Love
MedeaElectronique