Ο ζών νεκρός της μνήμης μας, μια πτήση στον αιθέρα, στο χάος και στο όνειρο, απελπισία χορτάτος is a work inspired by the homonymous lyrics of the song Argentina by the Greek folk band Himerini Kolymvites. It translates as “The living dead of our memory, a flight through the ether, in chaos and the dream, belly-full of despair.
The work explores a visual language to transcribe the dreams Mouravas had around the relationship of Hypnos and Thanatos (Sleep and Death). The use of the earthly materiality of ceramics creates a connection with the par-example archaeological artefact. The dreams give a loose narrative from our water-born start, through the collective identity-forming rituals, to the duality of our awakened and sleeping life to our cremated end, all in a circular frieze-type display.
The work was commissioned by Panos Giannikopoulos and Angeliki Tzortzakaki for the exhibition A Rave Down Below, as part of the 2023 ELEVSIS Cultural Capital of Europe.
Photo credit: Yiannis Kouskoutis
A Rave Down Below explores the political dynamics of the body in motion from a simultaneously geological and cultural underground point of departure. Alchemical wanderings from the historical past towards mythology and a post-industrial present culminate in a delirious dance. Inebriation, intoxication, revulsion, euphoria, release, vent, and ascent; a circular path from the body to the ground and back again.
The exhibition’s narrative unfolds through the myths and history of the city of Elefsina and its Mysteries, with dance serving as a means of climax, a sacred ritual, and a method for exploring concepts of death and loss. In A Rave Down Below, we witness dance and its affinity with the ailing body or even itself as illness and therapy, dance in a state of crisis, as exhaustion that brings pleasure displacing social exhaustion, as escape and counteraction.