nyctivoe - Dimitris Lyacos

NYCTIVOE
design by polimekanos, www.polimekanos.com
DIMITRIS LYACOS
FRITZ UNEGG
Installation open
Wednesday 3 March – Friday 19 March 2004
10.00 a.m. – 4.00 p.m.
Monday – Friday
Tuesday 2 March 7.00 p.m.
Launch Evening with first showing of the installation
followed by a discussion with Fritz Unegg, Dimitris
Lyacos, Shorsha Sullivan and Piers Burton-Page
The Greek text is published (together with a German translation)
by CTL-Presse, Borselstrasse 9-11, D-22765 Hamburg.
Further information at http://www.ctl-presse.de
The English translation will be published in 2005 by Shoestring Press.
Also available: The First Death by Dimitris Lyacos, translated by Shorsha Sullivan.
With six masks by Fritz Unegg.
Published 2000 by Shoestring Press (0115 925 1827)
Further information: [email protected]
Further information about the work of Dimitris Lyacos
can be found at http://www.lyacos.net
Information about the work of Fritz Unegg can be found at
http://www.kaernoel.at/bio_unegg.html
Austrian Cultural Forum
28 Rutland Gate
London SW7 1PQ
T 020 7584 8653
T 020 7225 0470
E [email protected]
Nyctivoe flyer – front
The Austrian Cultural Forum is pleased to play host to a new installation which is
the fruit of an on-going collaboration between the Greek-born poet Dimitris Lyacos
and the Austrian sculptor Fritz Unegg.
Polimekanos Ltd
T 020 7503 7535
E [email protected]
NYCTIVOE
design by polimekanos, www.polimekanos.com
DIMITRIS LYACOS
FRITZ UNEGG
Installation open
Wednesday 3 March – Friday 19 March 2004
10.00 a.m. – 4.00 p.m.
Monday – Friday
The Greek text is published (together with a German translation)
by CTL-Presse, Borselstrasse 9-11, D-22765 Hamburg.
Further information at http://www.ctl-presse.de
The English translation will be published in 2005 by Shoestring Press.
Tuesday 2 March 7.00 p.m.
Also available: The First Death by Dimitris Lyacos, translated by Shorsha Sullivan.
With six masks by Fritz Unegg.
Published 2000 by Shoestring Press (0115 925 1827)
Further information: [email protected]
Launch Evening with first showing of the installation
followed by a discussion with Fritz Unegg, Dimitris
Lyacos, Shorsha Sullivan and Piers Burton-Page
Further information about the work of Dimitris Lyacos
can be found at http://www.lyacos.net
Information about the work of Fritz Unegg can be found at
http://www.kaernoel.at/bio_unegg.html
Austrian Cultural Forum
28 Rutland Gate
London SW7 1PQ
T 020 7584 8653
T 020 7225 0470
E [email protected]
Nyctivoe flyer – front
The Austrian Cultural Forum is pleased to play host to a new installation which is
the fruit of an on-going collaboration between the Greek-born poet Dimitris Lyacos
and the Austrian sculptor Fritz Unegg.
Polimekanos Ltd
T 020 7503 7535
E [email protected]
NYCTIVOE
Faces of Death
The Text: Dimitris Lyacos
The Masks: Fritz Unegg
The Poem translated from the Greek
by Shorsha Sullivan
Curated by Christa Geiselhofer
Nyctivoe refers to a verse play of this name which forms the central panel in a
trilogy of dramatic poems by Dimitris Lyacos, with the overall title of Poena Damni,
the Torment of the Damned – the phrase has an echo of the idea of damnation
as banishment from the sight of god. Originally written in Modern Greek, the
trilogy has already been partially translated into German, and now also into English
by Shorsha Sullivan.
Dimitris Lyacos was born in Athens in 1966. His trilogy
Poena Damni (Z213: Exit, Nyctivoe, The First Death)
has been translated into English, Italian and German
and has been performed extensively around Europe
and more recently the USA.
While working on Poena Damni, Dimitris Lyacos came across some sculpted
masks by the Austrian sculptor Fritz Unegg. They chimed so well with the
characters and ideas of the poem that some of the images were eventually printed
with the Greek and English versions of one part of the trilogy, The First Death.
Fritz Unegg was born in 1951 in Wolfsberg, Austria.
His prints, ceramic sculptures and masks have been
exhibited across Europe, in a number of major cities.
He is active as a course leader in various workshops
in Austria and abroad.
Now, with Nyctivoe, the conjunction of sight and sound, text and idea has gone
one stage further. Poena Damni is ideally experienced in a fully-staged performance;
but it can also be read, on the printed page, as a nightmare voyage of the mind,
or realized via the mixed-media installation such as is presented here, where a
pre-recorded version emanates from a new set of sculpted figures. Deliberately,
Fritz Unegg’s sculptures hint at earlier dramatic conventions and emotions,
while simultaneously offering a wholly modern visual interpretation of Lyacos’s
dramatic poem, dark, primitive and grotesque, that matches the metaphysical
ambiguity of the text.
Shorsha Sullivan was born in Ireland but has spent
most of his working life in England, as a librarian. He
has made many translations, and has a special interest
in Modern Greek literature.
Piers Burton-Page was born in Leicester in 1947. Until
2002 he was a producer for BBC Radio, and now
works as a freelance writer and producer, mostly on
musical subjects.
Poet and sculptor have thus actively collaborated on this new installation. Sound
and light have a part to play too. Nyctivoe is a dense, bleak, ambiguous piece; its
density means that every individual will have his or her own, differing reactions.
Aside from the central figure of Nyctivoe herself, there are two other protagonists.
The Cast
Nyctivoe
Patience Tomlinson
Legion
Nicholas Boulton
Narrator
David Timson
Chorus
Sarah Belcher, Elaine Claxton,
Anne Rosenfeld, Rosalind Shanks
Sound recording directed by: Piers Burton-Page
Legion echoes the Biblical figure possessed by devils too numerous to name. Here,
at the trilogy’s centre, we witness an encounter between Legion and Nyctivoe
that becomes the catalyst for his union with the world of the dead. Legion’s voice
is sometimes distorted via a cassette-player, as if to underline the increasing distance
between the world of the spectator and the world of the characters in the play.
There is also a Narrator figure, more objective and dispassionate, perhaps existing
in another time and space. His neutral comments are sometimes interlarded with
Biblical quotations.
There is also a chorus. Four voices – here, all female – share broken, fragmented
verses.The chorus fills many roles, from active participant, to passive commentator.
The characters seem to be in a state of trance, communicating only with themselves.
The text is always dense and allusive: fragmented and suggestive rather than
concerned with any linear narrative. Aside from the biblical references, there are
echoes of vampire myth, of post-holocaust nightmare, of Japanese No- play.
Were Nyctivoe to be fully staged, the setting could well be some nightmare innercity setting or a grim scrap-yard at the end of the world, with mankind at the end
of its tether, post-Armageddon.The full text suggests elements of realism: a crashed
car, distant trains, fire, the beat of the sea. Without such literal trappings, and with
only the shattered word and the fragmented body to fuel the imagination, reality
as conjured in the mind may be even worse.
Nyctivoe flyer – front
Polimekanos Ltd
T 020 7503 7535
E [email protected]