Mythologies Exposition
Introduction
Hi you, welcome! This is a research exposition and creation catalogue for the performance piece Mythologies: a practice-based investigation through the concept of mythology, a cultural phenomenon which shapes a community’s way-of-being and belief system. Often disguised as a “natural” common-sense, contemporary mythologies deeply alter and normalize our perception of reality and, in turn, our agency to interact with it. Taking the role of mythologists, together we examine the ways we “story” our own experiences – attribute meaning and value to ourselves, our relationships, and the world. Storytelling is a performative act: it doesn't merely describe reality, it creates it. As more stories are told they entangle and articulate, allowing us to map our communal, symbolic order and its reverberations. In the context of embodied practice, mythologies are taken to be etched in the body, which has a unique potential to scandalize the established order, bringing about its erotic deconstruction.
Below you will find:
Performances
Mythologies has, so far, gone through two phases. The piece first premiered in Blank Check Festival 2, in collaboration with nein9 kollektiv and DOCK ART, September 2023. A revised version will be performed in Blank Check Festival 3, August 2024. Here you can watch videos of previous runs and trace the piece's evolution.
Phase 2 (July-September 2024)
Phase 1 (July-September 2023)
Practices
This being a practice-based process means that forms-of-practice (exercises, task, scores - experimental systems) are the site in which the creation unfolds. You're invited to activate some of Mythologies' core practices, delving into the experiential knowledge they foreground.
The form-of-practice most fundamental to Mythologies is The Signification Game, which allowed us to think through the semiology of embodied action, or how specific behaviors come to mean specific things. You can find video traces of this exercise further below.
Communion is a form which informed a particular relationality, one based in (almost) absolute unity, synchronicity, and agreement. This form was often used as a tune-in / warm-up.
The Mirror and the Mask is the performative mechanism which opens the second version of the piece. It works with many of the same principles as The Signification Game, and makes use of experimental Live Action Role-Playing to evoke the fantasy of mysticism.
These forms, alongside others, are activated in synthesis towards the embodied-retelling of Stories. You can find a selection of video excerpts of stories from through the process further below.
The Signification Game
Stories
Ecosystem
Mythologies participates in a wide ecosystem of discourses and practices.
In terms of philosophy, the piece’s namesake is Mythologies (1957) by Roland Barthes, which provided the fundamental concepts and semiotic framework of the piece. With time, Narrative Means to Therapeutic Purposes (1990) by David Epston and Michael White invited us to dive deeper into the performative power of storytelling. And Simulacra and Simulation (1981) by Jean Baudrillard, Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter (2003) by Karen Barad, and Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumatophilia (2023) by Avgi Saketopoulou – along with some of the mystical writings of Austin Osman Spare – were anchors for imagining the potential of the real to wobble.
The work’s practice-based research infrastructure is deeply informed by the writings of Ben Spatz, most recently Blue Sky Body: Thresholds for Embodied Research (2019). This along with the research and practice of Augusto Boal, Eugenio Barba, and Jerzy Grotowski.
The work’s performative aesthetic is inspired by the performance works Terrestrial Transit (2023) by Cranky Bodies a/company, zero point: Trajectories for a Landscape (2022) from Meg Stuart, Descha Daemgen, Abraham Hurtado, and The Unquiet Veil (2022) by Áron Birtalan.
Finally, I want to thank the many practitioners who contributed to this process. In particular, Susanna Ylikoski, Raz Mantell, Maayan Franco, Rotem Weissman, Aron Birtalan, Dafne Giannikopouloua, my colleagues at the New Performative Practices MA program at the Stockholm University of the Arts, and my wonderful collaborators Erika Kooki Filia, Lena Klink, and Roi Becker.