In Conversation With Christina Georgiou
An interview by Elena Coco, III Venice International Performance Art Week, December 2016
Cypriot artist Christina Georgiou participated at the III VENICE INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART WEEK, as part of co-curated live section of “THE DREAM OF ANTIGONE :: Performance Art In Greece Between The Seventies And Today” by Francesco Kiais – G.A.P. | Gathering Around Performance.
For three days and three hours each day, she performed “Antigone’s Dream: Actions of Love.” The piece sees Georgiou standing in the centre of the room, her face covered by her hair that is connected by extensions to the roots of a tree attached to the ceiling. She wears a long dark dress, which extends towards the wall in front of her. She stands like a sculpture on a pile of bricks, fated to crumble day by day. She pushes single bricks with her feet, and the visitors take fallen bricks and offer them to her. When she cannot push the bricks away anymore because she is surrounded by too many, people take them directly from the podium beneath her feet. After being offering a brick, she scratches it with a metal brush, and either blows or brushes the dust away. She repeats these actions until the pile gets less, she is lowered and her face becomes completely visible, her feet touch the floor. Surrounded by the wreckage of the former pile, she moves and turns, searching for eye contact with the visitors.
Christina Georgiou, Antigone’s Dream: Actions of Love. III Venice International Performance Art Week 2016. Photograph © Monika Sobczak
Elena: When your performance ended, you threw the brush away and stood motionless with closed eyes in the middle of the space. Someone of the visitors gave you the last brick – I noticed a smile on your face, and you held the brick close to your chest. An unexpected act. What caused this response? Can I ask you what you felt in that very moment?
Christina: That moment was truly precious for me. I felt a clear impulse that the performance had made its circle and reached completion – and I embraced this impulse with my action of letting go off anything I was holding in my hands, while giving lightness to my own body, and I closed my eyes just to feel for some moments this letting go. Letting go off the brush that I held for three days, letting go off the action of brushing the bricks, letting go off the performance itself. And suddenly I felt the presence of someone approaching me, placing another brick in my hand… I spontaneously and honestly smiled because I immediately felt that the energy and the intention of this person was a very positive and clear one: he asked me to move on, to go on with the performance. And I realised that even when I decide to give a kind of “closure” to my action, from the moment on that I myself had invited the visitors to be part of the work, I should accept their initiation or impulse to occur, whatever that is. On the other hand it is my choice if I accept this “invitation” or not. This is the reason why I smiled and placed the brick on my chest close to my heart – I felt thankful for this gesture and the lesson it gave to me.
E: I have written a short introduction or summery of your performance, of what the audience would have seen. Do you want to add something to my description? Maybe your point of view, what you have seen from your position or perspective?
C: I can only describe what I have “seen” from my position, as I am sure that every person in the room had a different and unique experience in relation to the action. During the performance, my eyes were covered most of the time and my vision was limited, but nevertheless this enabled me to stay focused and concentrated even more, while sharpening the other senses in order to take in feelings, movements, sounds and other events by the people in the audience. I received a great empathy and respect from the viewers toward me and my action. I could sense their immediate response each time I asked them through the gesture to place a brick in my hand. I could also feel their instantaneous observation and quest to take action when I was trying to remove the bricks with my legs from the pile below. All these elements formed a wonderful interaction, an action and response through mutual concentration on and around the performance piece, while creating a relationship between the myself, the performer, and the others, the visitors.
E: For you, what is the meaning of the final wreckage that surrounded you?
C: The wreckage that was constantly being formed and took its final form in the conclusion of my action, we can say it was a result of the repetitive action, but we should not see it only as a result of the action as it is also an action on its own. The repetition of the action was building something up and throughout this repetition the image of the action was constantly changing, until it had reached its transformation. Therefore action and image are interlinked, and they take place at the same time. So what I am suggesting here is to examine the action as being one with the image, which is created in this particular time and space. In addition, removing one brick at a time under my feet and brushing that brick in order for it to become dust, is itself an action of transformation that enabled me to uncover my face, and consequently envision and connect with what exists around me. Hence, once more, action and image are one.
E: With the performance you transform the space into a poetic image. Are there artists whose work influenced you for this aspect?
C: I personally find inspiration from my own self through my spiritual journey. I find that the Self is an unlimited, never ending and revealing source of inspiration and I realised that even when I used to get my inspiration from other sources, I was still leaning towards what comes from within.
E: In which way does Antigone’s Dream: Action of Love insert itself in the tradition of the artists’ dream that preceded you, and why do you think it is still important to keep this “dream” alive in the society in which we are living in today?
C: The myth of Antigone describes the story of a woman who had the courage to defy the commands and rules of a controlling dominion, and who follow her own ethics and values in order to make her actions, whatever the consequences. I see this as an action of love, because Antigone’s decision and action was an opposition of fear, and therefore a position of love. I personally recognise myself in Antigone and I also recognise in her all the people who position themselves in love and draw their decisions from love. I also see in Antigone the quality of being true to oneself and take the responsibility of one’s actions instead of allowing oneself to be under the control of an other. And this enables the opportunity to find freedom in everything that is lived and everything that life is. I believe that performance art and art in general is being used as a tool for creating worlds of freedom. In the same way, in my performance Antigone’s Dream: Actions of Love I endeavoured to bring up the idea that the process of “slavery to freedom” can be made by our own choices, if these are linked or not with the presence and/or intervention of others. Finally the “dream” is shaped by our decisions and choices, and that by positioning ourselves in love, instead of in fear, our life is being shaped accordingly. This is how we can keep the dream alive; whatever this “dream” is for each one of us.
To read more about Christina Georgiou visit www.christinageorgiou.com.
