Facing West Shadows: Lysistrata
Facing West Shadows: Lysistrata
“If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh; otherwise, they’ll kill you.”
–UNKNOWN (disputed and attributed to both Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw)
Lysistrata: “It’s like a bunch of yarn. When it’s tangled, we take it and pass it through the spindle back and forth—that’s how we’ll end the war, if people let us try, by sending out ambassadors here and there, back and forth.”
Lysistrata: “To Seize the treasury; no more money, no more war.”
-ARISTOPHANES, LYSISTRATA
Facing West Shadows: Lysistrata is a multi-channel sculptural, cinematic video installation created by the artist collective Facing West Shadows. It was developed in Limassol, Cyprus, at the MeMeraki Artist Residency. It is a visual poem about history repeating itself, infinite loops, political violence, greed, and how art responds through abiding stories and echoing images of resistance. Lysistrata is exhibited as a multi-channel animated frieze or mural as a cinematic audio/visual installation created with projected hand-made animation, puppets, masks, and cast shadows on a 9-meter (30 ft) sculptural paper surface. It takes its title from the striking mental image of Lysistrata (411 BC), an Ancient Greek Theatre Tragic Comedy by Aristophanes, which tells a tale of a group of women led by Lysistrata, whose name means “Army Disbander,” who boldly leads the efforts of women to end the ongoing decades-long horrors of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta to create peace between endlessly warring factions. Their tactic is to withhold all sex from the continuously warring men, to occupy the treasury (diverting money from the war) and government buildings (The Parthenon), and to develop alliances with the women of Sparta (by breaking them out of prison) to bring the war to a close. Themes of weaving and spinning, the use of everyday domestic items, the play of gender and power in dance, ancient Greek Theatre Comedy/Tragedy Masks and artwork, Karagiozis shadow puppetry, looping images, and visual and auditory echos, euphemisms, and visual symbols of protest and resistance against war within the long tradition of art taking on the subject across cultures and time. Please see below for more information. (Lydia Greer (artistic director of Facing West Shadows) collaborated with the artist and shadow performer YaWen Chien on Facing West Shadows: Lysistrata (2024), Artwork, Shadow Theatre, and Animation by YaWen Chien and Lydia Greer under the moniker Facing West Shadows, Camerawork by Lydia Greer and Ari Ali. Audio and visuals edited by Lydia Greer, Oud performed and recorded by Toufik Kannab, additional sound by Marko Jeremic and Katerina Rebello-Savvides, significant installation support by Sahand Gholipour) For a complete list of collaborators and supporters, please see below:
Significant installation support:
Sahand Gholipour
List of actors:
Andria Zachariou
Sasha Slepchuk
Ivi Shantos
Vidhya Bhardwaj
Dmitrii Skolzki
Sound, music, and vocals collected for the soundscape from the creative commons at Free Sounds.com (a complete list can be provided upon request)
Vocals:
Katerina Rebello-Savvides
List of Musicians:
Marko Jeremic
Toufik Kannab (Oud)
Remastering of Oud:
Marko Jeremic
Additional Camerawork:
Ari Nassar Ali
Very Special Thanks:
MeMeraki Artists Residency (Limassol, Cyprus) &
Sanaz Nazemi Agha
Petr Agupou
Rosemarie Agtoto
Ari Nassar Ali
Elias Bassil
Vidhya Bhardwaj
Catalina Cabrera
Facundo Gil Jauregui
Elena Menelaou
Konstantina Ioannidou
George Maratheftis
Maria Marcou
Manoushe Lebanese Food & Bakery
Maria Phillippou
Remolina Tango School
Katerina Rebello-Savvides
Leyla Remolina
Nicholas Shantos
Ivi Shantos
Sasha Slepchuk
Dmitrii Skolzki
Sahand Gholipour
Aggela Stavrou
Irene Zenonos
Andria Zachariou
Facing West Shadows: Lysistrata was also inspired by ancient and contemporary fairytales and myths (for example, Peace by Aristophanes, Kurt Schwitters post-World War One Dada anti-war fairy tales, Essayist Rebecca Solnit’s writing about fairytales as well as her revisionist feminist fairytales). Fairy tales and myths describe ways to survive or supersede wars, absurd cycles of violence, harrowing journeys through absurdist patriarchal societal norms, and gender-based violence. We were thinking of Private (internal) and Public (external) experiences of liberation and the historical and literal practices such as the binding and unbinding feet of women in China and Taiwan, which only ended only in the Quing dynasty (1912), the play of gender and power in dance, ancient Comedy Masks, and characters, Karagiozis and Karagoz shadow puppetry, and visual metaphors, looping images and echos, euphemisms, analogies, taboos, visual symbols, and protest songs within the long tradition of art taking on the subject of war and resistance across cultures and time.
We were greatly inspired by our artist residency at MeMereki in Limassol, Cyprus, its place within history and present (2024), the incredible arts community we encountered, the current endless processes of gentrification, and confluences of migration, language, and culture, as well as the geographical, archeological, and mythological influences of the specific place and time in which we developed this body of work.