Biennale Arte 2024
Exhibition Overview
Vigil Workspace
1. Statement in solidarity for Palestine & reading of Palestine Hologram
2. The nexus of border violence and surveillance technologies across the Cyprus maritime borderscape
3. Bring your forgotten memories and a stone
4. Curse Reverse
5. MYRRHA
6. Last Wave: A Listening Vigil
Publication
Vigil Workspace
1. Statement in solidarity for Palestine & reading of Palestine Hologram
2. The nexus of border violence and surveillance technologies across the Cyprus maritime borderscape
3. Bring your forgotten memories and a stone
4. Curse Reverse
5. MYRRHA
6. Last Wave: A Listening Vigil
Publication
Endrosia
Performers: Alexandros Xenophontos, Marina Ashioti
Performance support: Niki Charalambous, Doris Mari Demetriadou
Live score: Mattia Triple
Production assistant: Kaylem Alavi
Poster design by Doris Mari Demetriadou
On 28 September 2024, a rite of passage took place at the Cyprus Pavilion, marking
the passing of the Vigil Workspace residency baton from Alexandros Xenophontos
to Marina Ashioti. The artists, working with Mattia Triple, whose sonic accompaniments (electronic, as well as through wind instruments) took on the role of a
narrator, and with the help of Doris Mari Demetriadou and Niki Charalambous, presented a promenade performance titled MYRRHA.
With Triple’s melodies seeping through the Organ and the suspended ceiling of the installation TOMORROW MORNING YOU WILL SEE lighting up the floor, which becomes the first set piece, the audience is subjected to a series of short-circuits that go on into the exhibition space’s courtyard, before concluding in the darkness that lies at the end of the path.
Photography by Kaylem Alavi 2024
With Triple’s melodies seeping through the Organ and the suspended ceiling of the installation TOMORROW MORNING YOU WILL SEE lighting up the floor, which becomes the first set piece, the audience is subjected to a series of short-circuits that go on into the exhibition space’s courtyard, before concluding in the darkness that lies at the end of the path.
Photography by Kaylem Alavi 2024
A future scenario forms the crux of the performance: the collapse of KINYRAS, a domestic subsea cable running along the coast of Cyprus, named after the mythical king who was unwittingly seduced by his daughter, Myrrha.
While the myth details Myrrha’s punishment by the gods, who transform her into a myrrh tree with a constant stream of aromatic sap representative of her tears, the project reconfigures the tale, intertwining it with that of Medea, a witch and a healer whose powerful abilities become dust when confronted with Euripides’ text about a mother who murders her children. Ancient myth, tragedy and vengeance are suspended information spirits, collapsed into an ensemble of choreographed, vocal and sonic experiments.