A Rave Down Below - 2023 Eleusis European Capital of Culture
Slip Away functions as an archival game, a hedonistic allusion that takes the form of a hybrid institutional flag. Schmidt proposes a new textile composition depicting a double vortex using collage and Xerox, in a movement of stepping in and out of the shape of ∞, endless and inexhaustible as in a delirious dance. Schmidt draws civic material from a months-long survey of repaired pavements and semi-permanent concrete footprints along the multi-level, eroded route from the Sacred Gate of Kerameikos to the Eleusinian Propylaia, the still-active gay cruising area, and the abandoned sanctuary of Aphrodite along the Iera Odos, towards the exhibition area. These - archaeological like - findings on the ground are a kind of uncanny record of multiple identities walking on foot with unknown intentions. The artist references Steve Terry's Wildlife Archive - the processes of archiving past revolutionary discourses in psychotropic pleasure rituals. The work implicitly refers to the loss of the common spaces of social activation. Still, in the form of a gonfalon flag, it redefines the exhibition space as a context of hedonistic recollection and action.
Mystery 151 A Rave Down Below explores the political dynamics of the body in motion from a simultaneously geological and cultural underground point of departure. Alchemical wanderings from the historical past towards mythology and a post-industrial present culminate in a delirious dance. Inebriation, intoxication, revulsion, euphoria, release, vent, and ascent; a circular path from the body to the ground and back again.
The exhibition’s narrative unfolds through the myths and history of the city of Elefsina and its Mysteries, with dance serving as a means of climax, a sacred ritual, and a method for exploring concepts of death and loss. In Mystery 151 A Rave Down Below, we witness dance and its affinity with the ailing body or even itself as illness and therapy, dance in a state of crisis, as exhaustion that brings pleasure displacing social exhaustion, as escape and counteraction.
Mystery 151 A Rave Down Below focuses on the potential for creating corporeal archives, nonlinear knowledge transmission, and storytelling with unexpected cross-cultural affinities. The ephemeral, physicality, uncertainty, and performativity elements serve as critical starting points and accompany the audience through the viewing and participation process.
Through installations, painting, sculpture, sound, and performance, the exhibition seeks to redefine the boundaries of dance, reflecting on the (collective) body and its absence, memory, and the necessity of movement. It contemplates utopian declarations of dance subcultures, their glorification, thwarting, and commercial exploitation, hovering between desire, disappointment, and expectation. It examines the relationship between dance movements and community formation, as well as demands for social justice, portraying dance as a translinguistic activity for creating a new world: a delirious grammar that is impossible to parse, slippery in mind and unwieldy in the mouth, passing through muscle spasms, chemical compounds, machines and pixels.
Mystery 151 A Rave Down Below coincides with the celebration of “Mesosporitissa” connecting different historical periods of Elefsina while marking the transition into winter.
Contributors:
Participating artists: Theodoros Giannakis / Viktor Gogas & Kostas Kostopoulos / Captain Stavros / Lito Kattou / Petros Moris / Nkisi / Katerina Papazissi / Georgia Sagri / Yorgos Sapountzis / Baratto & Mouravas / Flux Office / Greek Visions / Klaus Jurgen Schmidt / Odete / Diana Policarpo / Wu Tsang
Curated by: Panos Giannikopoulos
Curatorial director: Zoi Moutsokou
Public Program / Publication: Angeliki Tzortzakaki
Architectural Design: Trail Practice
Research: Georgia Liapi
Production management: WILD REEDS
Texts: Leandros Kyriakopoulos, McKenzie Wark, Panos Giannikopoulos, Angeliki Tzortzakaki
Lighting: Aslight
Scaffolding: Greenskal
