ASSODYO ► THE CHICKENS AND THE FLEAS ► OMONOIA 1980
"Chicken", "Fleas" and "Omonia Square" by Nova Melancholia. Vassilis Noulas explains why and how he put up Ioannou [gr] by Charilaos Trouvas
Blood mimics air, it augments in springtime, it is characterized by the warm/humid attribute, it dominates man's childhood.
Bile mimics fire, it augments in summertime, it is characterized by the warm/dry attribute, it dominates man's adolescence.
"When Adam sinned, the yellow bile turned into bitterness and the black bile into the darkness of God's absence. The moment when Adam broke the divine commandment, the black bile was condesned in his blood. This happened in the same way luminance is lost once we blow out the candle and only the glowing wick and its stench remains. This is what happened to Adam. For, once the light inside him went off, the black bile was condesned in his blood and sadness and desperation were stirred inside him, because, in the case of Adam, melancholy was swarmed inside him by the devil."
St. Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179)
Black bile mimics earth, it augments in automntime, it is characterized by the cold/dry attribute, it doninates man's adulthoood.
"As for the black bile which, in its natural state, is cold and cannot be found on the surface, if it is in excess inside the body, it causes apoplexy or torpidity or mirthlessness or fear. If it is overheated, it causes conviviality accompanied by singing and ecstasis and rashes and other things alike."
Pseudo-Aristotle, Melancholy and genious. The 30th problem
Phlegm mimics water, it augments in wintertime, it is characterized by the cold/humid attribute, it dominates man's elderly age.
"Man's body has blood, phlegm, yellow and black bile inside it: these constitute human body's nature and on those pain and health lay their principle. Therefore man is healthy when, mainly, these components are mixed with the right analogy of attributes and of quantity and when the mingling is perfect. Contrary to this, pain is provoked when one of these are in a smaller or bigger quantity or it lays separate inside the body and is not mixed with all the rest."
Scattered impressions of Baudelaire's "Fleurs du mal" at an appartment in Exarheia, Athens.
Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday / 9.15 pm / Duration: 60 min.
Asklipiou 99, Athens / Free entrance with donation
The homemade performance Ectoplasms, a strange "poetry night" inspired by splatter movies aestetics, will be presented in September in Leipzig and Dresden at the Off Europa Festival.
Text: Miltos Sachtouris, Direction: Vassilis Noulas, Sets-costumes: Dora Economou
Performers: Lida Dalla, Despina Chatzipavlidou, Antigoni Riga, Eleni Karagiorgi, Vassilis Noulas
Duration: 60 min.
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Nova Melancholia is active inside the ever-changing space of theatrical and visual arts performance since 2007. The collective attempts a non-systematic mapping of various aesthetics, strategies and texts that have contributed to the configuration of today's melancholy.
Nova Melancholia follows non-linear narrations and open dramaturgies. It uses the image-creating method of montage. Often parallel actions co-exist, actions that are seemingly non related to each other, and which create a multi-perspective landscape. Nova Melancholia uses poetry, essays and other non-theatre literature as material for its work. The produced outcome is rather a hybrid which oscillates between visual arts, choreographic performances and self-reflective staged lectures. The aesthetic strategies often include camp and/or gender identities as means of queering the spectator’s experience of the work. This gesture has the ambition to place itself within the current discourse on the political and its relation to today’s artistic product and its work ethics.
Since 2010, Nova Melancholia walks along with other collectives (Institute for Live Arts Research |Π|, the Mavili Collective, the Omonoia Collective, Green Park), actively participating in their function (organization of conferences, joined claims to the State, occupation of the EMBROS theatre). We believe in the cooperative and public nature of art because we feel that thus its inherent social and political role gets empowered. Networks of collaborations that are being weaved around and with Nova Melancholia produce politics through forms and not through declarations.
Nova Melancholia's performances have been presented -amongst others- in: Athens Festival, Greek National Theatre, Onassis Cultural Centre, the Athens Biennal, occupied theatres, self-organized site-specific venues, BIOS / Athens, Panta Théâtre / Caen, UM Gallery / Prague. The collective has received funding several times by the Greek Ministry of Culture. Nova Melancholia received a special Μention for the DESTE Foundation Prize 2013. Manolis Tsipos’ text “Still Life. For the Glory of the City” has been staged in the official Avignon Festival 2014.
more"How Much 'Performance Art' Can You Take?" [gr] curated by Efi Falida
"Déconstruire la normalité: Esthétiques post-traditionnelles en Grèce" [fr]
An article by Georges Sampatakakis
"Athènes à l'épreuve du fantasme" [fr]
reportage de Aïnhoa Jean-Calmettes, entretien avec Vassilis Noulas
"Manolis Tsipos' Theatre" [en] by Georges Sampatakakis
"On Agencies and Withdrawals" [en] by Natascha Siouzouli
Congress "Politics of the Applied: Theatre and Art as Intervention"
"Minima Melancholia: Performances of Affective Refusals and Rem(a)inders" [en] by Hypatia Vourloumis (text in magazine: issue Melancholy and Politics)
"Our Need for Melancholy" [gr] Book review by Vassilis Noulas
(A. Rassidaki, On Melancholy, Kichli Publishing House 2012)
"Melancholy in the Desert. An Aesthetics of Exodus" [en] by Natasa Siouzouli
"Flexible Performances in Liquid Times" [gr] by Vassilis Noulas
Focus: Sept réponses prêtes pour Nova Melancholia / Nova Melancholia's seven ready answers [fr/en] par Grigoris Ioannidis
Time and Memory in Walter Benjamin's "On the Concept of History" and the Example of a Performance by Nova Melancholia [gr] University paper (ASFA) by Vassilis Noulas
54 Dervenion Str., 10681, Athens
e-mail: novamelancholia@gmail.com