Constantinopoliad | Sister Sylvester – Nadah El Shazly
Dates
Tickets
Venue
Time & Date
Information
Language
The performance is in English without Greek surtitles.
Information
Onassis Stegi Friends ticket reservations: from 07 November 2023, 17:00
General Public ticket reservations: from 11 November 2023, 17:00
Free admission tickets will be available at the venue 30 minutes before the performance, subject to availability and on a first-come, first-served basis.
After the event starts, entrance for the public is not allowed in the venue.
Upon your entrance to the event venue, please ensure that you have an official identification document with you (e.g., ID card, passport, etc.)
The performance is not accessible for persons with disabilities.
Duration
50 minutes
Filming
On Friday 24 November the performance will be filmed. Attendants on that day will be asked to sign a participation application / copyright permit before entering the venue.
Introduction
A handmade book, read collectively by the audience inside of a sound installation. A response to the archive of the poet Constantine Cavafy, the work is inspired by the blank and torn out pages in “Constantinopoliad, an epic”, the journal the teenage Cavafy began when he and his family fled Alexandria; by lost and missing archives through time; and by the ghosts, both erotic and historical, that visit the older Cavafy in his poems.
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Photo: Pinelopi Gerasimou
Appearing like an open invitation-challenge to a journey at the borders of genders and diverse worlds, between East and West, to what you expect and what you have experienced through Cavafy, "Constantinopoliad," the multi-prismatic and interactive performance devised by visual artist Kathryn Hamilton, aka Sister Sylvester, along with Egyptian musician Nadah El Shazly, visualizes the empty and blank pages of "Constantinopoliad," the diary kept by Cavafy when he and part of his family had to flee Alexandria in a hurry for Constantinople.
The three-dimensional handmade book offered to you during the performance becomes the beginning of a multifaceted artistic experience accompanied by music, narration, a sound installation, and reading, even touching upon video installation and singing. With the diary entries of an adolescent Cavafy during his journey to 19th-century Ottoman Constantinople as a point of reference, the two performers invite us to shape our own journey, actively participating in what he wrote, lived, listened to, and fantasized about. "How can we truly reconstruct the days and nights of Cavafy if we cannot hear the music he was listening to?" is the question that emerges through the book's pages; the answer comes from the performance that unfolds before our very eyes.
Nothing in this performance is destined to be forsaken, even after you have long exited the room; in this multi-prismatic wonder that "Constantinopoliad" unfolds as a coming-of-age journey of C. P. Cavafy, we encounter all our own ghosts.
The performance was first presented in April 2023 at the Onassis Foundation's "Archive of Desire" festival in New York, commemorating the 160th anniversary of C.P. Cavafy's birth.
Constantinopoliad | Sister Sylvester & Nadah El Shazly
