Parascenium [Wings]

The hybrid work Parascenium (i.e. the wings of a theatre), developed by Andi Xhuma for ARC, is an unusual performance on the mechanics of the mediation and consumption of cultural products. Using the example of dance video clips that we usually watch online, the artist develops the looped representation of a performance’s creation and, contrary to such clips, focuses on the characters instead of the narrative.

Parascenium is devised as a form of critique introduced before the opening of each day of performances in the context of the festival’s nucleus, at the wider space of the theatre entrance, as well as at the public space of the Athens metro, in reference to the festival itself.

Audience members are thus confronted with a-performance-before-the-performance and so find themselves before an unveiling of the very mechanism of representation as everything is being enacted under their gaze as well as that of the camera crew that concurrently records the performers-characters of the play.

During the function of this double perception – an ‘anatomy lesson’ after the one in Rembrand’s famous oil painting – one can reflect on the ways that an event may be fragmented and reassembled, conceptually and temporally condensed in favour of a consumer-spectator with ever-decreasing abilities of concentration and commitment.

Allowing a glimpse to the backstage of a broadcast, rather than of a performance, Xhuma develops the content of another backstage action and another broadcast, most probably one initiated by the smartphones of those present and the ensuing infinite reproduction of images online.

The strict coordination demanded at the basis of such a process is gradually fading away, as the element of chance takes the reins within the enacted loop.

Control in body movement and other elements of that first staging (montage, lighting, sound) are being replaced by the anarchy of multiple viewings and the collective illusion of a ‘live’ event. Andi Xhuma’s work alludes to the possibility that the bulimic relationship of the hyper-connected world to the Here-and-Now of the image may be nothing other than the flip side of a series of impossible performances and zombie representations.

Creation: Andi Xhuma
Dancers: Dimitris Karageorgos, Fotini Xhuma, Epaminondas Damopoulos, Nadi Gogoulou, Andi Xhuma

24, 25, 27 May, 8:15 pm
outside the KIVOTOS Theatre
Pireos 115, Gazi
Τel. +30 210 3427426
Public Transport access:
Metro: Kerameikos
Electric Railway: Thiseio
Bus/Trolley: Kampa

26 May, 12:00 pm
Monastiraki Metro Station