On 28 September 2024, a performance/rite of passage took place at the Cyprus Pavilion, marking the passing of the Vigil Residency baton, from Alexandros Xenophontos to Marina Ashioti (artists in Endrosia). 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 MYRRA.
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.
The performance is concerned with the future 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.